In 1952, Louise Burrell Miller and others sued the DC Board of Education to have deaf African American children educated within the District and won. Schools in DC were segregated by law, including the city’s only school for deaf children—the…

In February 1944 a federal employee named Clara Mays purchased the house at 2213 First Street NW in DC's Bloomingdale neighborhood. Despite warnings she’d be taking a risk in buying the house because a racial covenant barred its sale to African…

Washington attorney Belford V. Lawson (1909-1985) spoke these words at a 1947 forum at Lincoln University that followed the release of a much-anticipated report by the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. He urged Lincoln students to study the…

In the decades before World War II, African Americans were denied access to most municipal golf courses and private clubs in the United States. Fewer than twenty out of more than 5,000 courses nationwide were open to blacks, and most of these were…

Pauli Murray, who wrote these words, was the highest scoring student in the Howard University School of Law class of 1944. Although she faced discrimination as the only woman, she later recalled how important it felt to be part of what was happening…

DC native Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950) was a top civil rights attorney and a mentor to an entire generation of African American lawyers. Houston attended the city’s segregated school system, graduating from M Street High School (later…

George E.C. Hayes (1894-1968) graduated from the Howard University Law School in 1918 and spent much of the rest of his life working to dismantle racial segregation. Hayes taught law at Howard and served as the university’s general counsel for more…

These words, written by the prominent sociologist and journalist Kelly Miller, described Civil Rights leader Archibald Grimké (1849-1930). Born to an enslaved mother and her white owner in South Carolina, Grimké earned a law degree from Harvard,…

The trip, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was planned to test individual states’ compliance with the 1960 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia that prohibited segregation in bus terminals and restaurants serving…

When the stately, turn-of-the 20th century rowhouse at 1727 S Street NW in Dupont Circle was sold to an African American couple in violation of a racial covenant that restricted its sale to whites, the house and everyone involved were thrust into a…