Lafayette Matthews

Lafayette Matthews is a recent graduate from Princeton University where he majored in history. Raised in Manassas Park, VA, he enjoys poring over archives and piecing together stories. He liked the founding fathers and Broadway musicals before it was cool.

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In 1916, Jeannette Rankin made history as the first woman elected to Congress. A renowned pacifist, Rankin was the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. involvement in World War II. At age 87, Rankin made one final push for peace by leading an anti-Vietnam march: the Jeannette Rankin Brigade.

When American Johnny Hayes won the marathon at the 1908 London Olympics, it set off a nationwide craze for long-distance running, dubbed "Marathon mania."

In 1972 a local teen took the Olympics by storm. At just 15 years old, Melissa Belote won three gold medals and set three world records. But in her hometown of Springfield, VA, she was already a household name.

The United States is the only country that does not dip its flag during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic games. The "flag pas" began thanks to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who served a brief stint as president of the USOC in 1928.

Educator, author, and activist Mary Church Terrell was the first president of the National Association for Colored Women, the first African-American woman elected to a major city school board, and a founding member of the NAACP. A lifelong advocate for equality, Terrell participated in sit-ins well into her eighties. But out of all of her activism, one 1906 speech stands out as an insightful and damning critique of racial dynamics in the nation's capital.

The year was 1976: America's bicentennial. To celebrate, President Ford invited Queen Elizabeth II to a state dinner at the White House. A certain local public television station took on the ambitious task of live broadcasting the event, but didn't expect production challenges of royal proportion.

There are two things that all D.C. residents love: the first lady and the performing arts. It’s no surprise then that in the capital, “First Lady of American Theatre” Helen Hayes is an icon. Born in 1900 in Washington D.C., Hayes’s career spanned nearly eighty years. She was the first EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) recipient to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan in 1986. But out of all her accomplishments, perhaps one of the most overlooked is Helen Hayes’s involvement in the desegregation of the National Theatre.