Articles

The U.S. Botanic Garden—located adjacent to the Capitol in a triangle between Maryland Ave SW, Washington Ave SW, and First Street—is rooted in the earliest planning of the capital city. Many of the Founding Fathers believed that a living repository for plants would have countless benefits, from the production of food and medicine to the scientific study of international specimens to the enjoyment of aesthetic beauty. George Washington himself wrote an impassioned letter in 1796 about how a botanic garden should be included in the city plan, even suggesting a few feasible locations.

Perhaps, in some alternate history, the name “Virginia” may have applied to our entire country. When the English first settled North America, that was certainly the case. 

“If we go, we’re going to take this building with us...There’s going to be a helluva smoke signal.” That’s what Russell Means, an Oglala Dakota, told Evening Star reporters a few days after he and a group of several hundred other Native Americans broke into the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in Washington, D.C. and refused to leave. 

On the night of February 24, 1867 in the nation’s capital, Scarlet Crow, a visiting Sioux chief, mysteriously disappeared. No one knows for sure what happened. Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate oral history proposed that he was kidnapped, while the Evening Star newspaper put forth that he had simply wandered and gotten lost. What is indisputable, however, is that after that night, Scarlet Crow was never seen alive again. 

When anti-discrimination legislation was delayed for four years, activists occupied Federal buildings in protest, placing Washington at the heart of the rising disability rights movement.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to begin your training as a World War II spy in the forests of Prince William County, Virginia.

In 1933, eleven words made Minnie Keyes a wealthy woman. They were scrawled on a blank telegram slip, tied to a pencil with an elastic band, and stuffed under a mattress. “Minnie Keyes: You have been good to me. All is yours.” These sentences were the final will and testament of Leonard A. Hamilton, who had lived as a boarder at Keyes’ home for 30 years. Once a court accepted the scrap as legitimate, Keyes inherited Hamilton’s $100,000 estate, about $2.1 million in today’s money. Most of its value lay in real estate: dozens of homes scattered across Washington. The properties Minnie Keyes came to own, however, were not the city’s best. And what should happen to them became the source of great debate.

When Congressional delay jeopardized the Americans with Disabilities Act, protesters responded with a powerful demonstration on the Capitol steps.

In 1910 Maryland Democrats planned to bar all African Americans from voting, forever. But Black men and women were ready to fight for their place in the state.

Racial covenants made much of Bloomingdale off-limits to Black buyers. A welder, a polyglot immigrant, and a Civil Rights icon rallied to change that.

In 1971 Washington’s leading LGBT activist became the first openly gay man to run for Congress. In just a two month campaign, Frank Kameny put gay rights on D.C.'s political agenda- and made them stick.

In 1949, a shocking mid-air crash near National Airport killed more people than any previous air disaster in U.S. history. It did not take long for investigators to place the blame on one unlucky pilot. But was Capt. Erick Rios Bridoux really at fault?