Black History

Ask most people what Supreme Court case ended public school segregation and they will say, “Brown vs. Board of Education.” That is would be correct… for most of the country. But, for citizens in the federally-controlled District of Columbia another case would be more important: Bolling vs. Sharpe, a case filed on behalf of eleven African American parents whose children had been denied enrollment at D.C.'s John Phillip Sousa Junior High School on the basis of race. 

Yarrow Mamout — a West African who survived the Middle Passage, won his freedom, and became one of early Washington’s most remarkable figures — left a rare portrait of early Georgetown.