These first two lines of a song sung to the tune of “Down by the Riverside” by Howard University student protestors during a 1968 campus uprising capture the spirit of civic activism that has consistently defined a segment of the university’s…

Activist and Ward 7 DC councilmember Willie J. Hardy (1922-2007), quoted above, lived most of her life around Marshall Heights, where, in the 1930s, her mother helped cut roads and haul water to the then-isolated, semi-rural Black community. Hardy…

Reginald Booker (1941-2015) was propelled into activism by his family's displacement from southwest DC in the early 1950s, when he was a young teenager. They had recently moved to the city, where his mother worked a night job as a janitor on Capitol…

Arthur Ashe, who wrote this passage, was among the many luminaries who headed to this area—a center for black business, activism and entertainment since the turn of the 20th century—when he came to town for tennis tournaments in the early 1960s. U…

In 1874, as DC's African American population and political clout grew during Reconstruction (1865-1877), Congress stripped DC residents of the ability to elect their own mayor and city council, denying them the right of self-governance. For the…

By the time Bishop Williams (1907-1991) called for the resignation of the members of the Board of Education, he was already a well-known preacher and prominent civil rights activist. Williams began his career in DC as a street preacher at the corner…

Upon its opening, the Washington Urban League (WUL) was one of more than 40 branches of the National Urban League in as many cities across the country. The inter-racial Washington chapter, now known as the Greater Washington Urban League, devoted…

Over the course of four transformative decades, Vermont Avenue Baptist Church was a hub for civil rights organizing in the District of Columbia. Beginning in 1929 with the leadership of Reverend C.T. Murray, the church expanded its rolls to nearly…

In early 1950, Mary Church Terrell and other activists attempted to eat at Thompson’s Restaurant, a downtown cafeteria and one of many restaurants and eateries with a whites-only policy. The group was deliberately testing the validity of…

This quote by Mary Church Terrell, who moved to 1615 S Street in Dupont Circle with her husband Robert Heberton Terrell in 1920, closed an opinion piece by the editors of the Chicago Defender in June 1947. Mary Terrell was a vocal, internationally…