Marie Richardson (1920-1987) became a labor and civil rights activist in the 1930s, while a student at Cardozo High School. Her father handled baggage at Union Station, and together they helped…

"I stick to my firm, unshakeable belief that the black press is an advocacy press, and that I, as a part of that press, can't afford the luxury of being unbiased."

In 1938, the National Non-partisan Council on Public Affairs (NPC), an outgrowth of the Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) sorority, became the first organization devoted to lobbying the federal government to…

"The persistent and forceful campaign which the Washington Council [of the National Negro Congress] and allied organizations have waged against police brutality in Washington has been one of the most…

Ruth Bates Harris (1919-2004) is most remembered for blowing the whistle on NASA’s discriminatory hiring practices in the early 1970s. NASA hired her as an equal opportunity officer in 1971, but two…

"If I'm criticized, then I've been heard." (Willie J. Hardy)

"Believing…that everyone has a right to good and decent housing, a right of choice to live where one can afford to buy and desires to live—our firm dedicated itself to finding such homes….We knocked…

The US Department of Justice (DOJ), headquartered in a building designed for it as part of the Federal Triangle project in the 1930s, has been an essential tool in advancing African American civil…

In February 1944 former National Negro Congress leader John P. Davis attempted to enroll his five-year-old son Michael at Noyes Elementary School in his Brookland neighborhood and was turned away.…

“If democracy is to live, segregation must die.” (Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, 1956)