Howard University

On March 22, 1968, Adrienne Manns, senior editor of Howard University’s official student newspaper, The Hilltop, summed up the lively scene on campus in a bold editorial:

“If this is not revolution, then what is?”

Three days earlier, one thousand students had taken over the university’s main administration building – known as the “A” building – refusing to leave. 

Alma Thomas, the African-American abstract artist and the subject of a recent WETA Arts episode, had many fans in Washington, D.C., but was her biggest fan the CIA?

In June 1981, Black Deaf leaders gathered in Washington to sew the seeds of an organization that would have a profound impact on the Black Deaf community. After centuries of exclusion in both Black and Deaf spaces, organizers came together to make a space of their own. With goals to educate, empower, and strengthen the community, this conference led a call for Black inclusion and leadership in Deaf organizations locally and nationally.

Returning to campus for the new school year in 1937, Howard University’s students received grim news: one of their deans, Lucy Diggs Slowe, was “reputed critically ill with pleurisy. Her condition was such on Tuesday that relatives were called to her bedside.” After 15 years at the university, Slowe was a staple to the campus and its students – many of the women enrolled at the college saw her has a mentor and advocate for their education at Howard. 

What the headline didn’t mention was what some believed was the cause of her declining health. There were rumblings that it was the efforts of key Howard University staff that had caused her illness, and they wouldn’t stop until Slowe left the school for good. 

Who was Lucy Diggs Slowe, and what led to such harsh conflict between her and the university?

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.

James Nabrit Jr came to the District as an up-and-coming Howard law professor. He developed the first course at an American law school on civil rights law and instilled in his students an unrelenting belief in the immorality and impracticality of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. As the lead counsel for the District's Bolling v. Sharpe case, Nabrit championed the position of attacking segregation outright, instead of relying on equalization. He pushed Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP to sharpen their attacks on school segregation and strongly influenced the outcome of all of the Brown v. Board school cases.

Charles Hamilton Houston is referred to as the "architect" of the civil rights movement. Before helping the Consolidated Parent Group kickoff their legal case, Houston built up the Howard University Law School into a world-class legal institution and mentored some of the most important figures of the civil rights movement, including Thurgood Marshall.

If you’re from the D.C. area, you know Rock Creek Park for its hiking trails and scenic views. But if you’re from any other part of the country, you might recognize it best from the 1975 song, “Rock Creek Park.” The song’s minimalist verse describes happenings at the local park after sundown...

Today, the K-Pop phenomenon has taken the world by storm; but it seems that American fascination with Korean music goes all the way back to the late 1800s, 1896 to be exact. Long before bands like BTS sold out stadiums, there were seven Korean (then called Chosun) students whose singing captured the attention of “dozens of damsels” at Howard University.

Prior to 1909, Harry Bradford had almost never landed himself in the paper. He appeared in The Washington Post once, when it announced that the Kensington Orchestra was going to be performing in the near future. (Bradford played violin.) But other than that, nothing. And yet, in 1910, Bradford’s name was in all caps on the front page of the Post. “Bradford told to quit,” the headline read.