Black History

In the early morning hours of June 23, 1968, thick clouds of tear gas rolled through a multitude of shacks on the National Mall.  This shantytown was Resurrection City, and its residents were the nation’s poor. As many ran from their shelters, they saw Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final dream of economic equality withering in the gas. They had been citizens of the city for six weeks, all the while campaigning for rights for the poor around D.C. Now their work seemed all for naught. After an increase in violence and with an expiring living permit, the police had come to chase them out. Children were crying, adults screaming, and some were even vomiting. But amid the chaos, a song rang out: “we shall overcome.”

You might not immediately associate roller coasters with racial equality, but more than three years before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington, Maryland’s Glen Echo Park was a focal point of the Civil Rights Movement. It made sense: since its opening in 1899, Glen Echo had been the premier amusement park for white Washingtonians. The park featured a number of modern roller coasters, a miniature railway, a Ferris wheel, an amphitheater, a pool: everything and more that other parks provided.

Civil War blogger Ron Baumgarten discusses an often-forgotten aspect of Civil War history: contraband camps. After generations in bondage, thousands of African Americans from the South fled northward. Many came to the D.C. area and first experienced freedom on the abandoned lands of secessionists, which the U.S. government converted into camps during the war. 

Elizabeth Keckley rose from slave to the Lincoln White House thanks to her supreme skill as a dressmaker. Her autobiography provides one of the most powerful accounts of the First Family's personal lives.

In 1964, Washington, D.C. was the site of the only known in-person meeting between Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which was significant considering the two leaders' very public differences on approaches to the civil rights movement. The two staged a made-for-the-cameras meeting in the U.S. Capitol. But, as strange as the photo-op with King seemed at the time, Malcolm made headlines with an even more unlikely connection in Washington a few years earlier.

Earl Lloyd was a rising basketball star at West Virginia State College, but little did he know how soon he would become an important part of sports history. Toward the end of Lloyd’s senior season he was heading to class with a classmate and she told him she heard his name on the radio that day. The Washington Capitols had drafted him. It would be a history-making homecoming.

Long before selfies and social media, the Scurlock family captured the elegance, ambition, and pride of Washington’s Black middle class. Their photography studio became a cultural cornerstone, documenting a “secret city” invisible to the white majority—but radiant in its dignity and style.

Ask most people about the history of professional basketball in Washington, D.C. and they’ll probably mention the NBA’s Baltimore Bullets’ move to D.C. in the 1970s. Or maybe a few old timers might remember the Washington Capitols, D.C.’s Basketball Association of America team that was coached by GW alum Red Auerbach. But, sadly most have forgotten about the true trailblazers of Washington, D.C. basketball, the Washington Bears.

In the 1940s, Jim Crow held strong in Arlington, Virginia. African-Americans encountered discrimination at segregated eating establishments, businesses and recreation facilities. Even access to medical care was divided along racial lines and African Americans were forced to travel to hospitals in Washington, D.C. or Alexandria. It was difficult – especially in a medical emergency – as many could not afford cars of their own. In 1947, three men with bright ideas and business ingenuity stepped up to fill the void.

The 1964 Freedom Summer movement in Mississippi does not generally conjure up images of the nation’s capital. But a few of the organizers had strong ties to the District and helped advance a bold crusade to register Black voters in Mississippi, risking violence and arrest to challenge Jim Crow.