Barry Farm-Hillsdale was created under the auspices of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1867 in what was then the outskirts of the nation's capital. Residents built churches and schools, and the community became successful. In the 1940s, youth from the community courageously desegregated the Anacostia Pool, and Barry Farm Dwellings was built to house war workers. In the 1950s, community parents joined the fight to desegregate schools in Washington, D.C., as local leaders fought off plans to redevelop the area. Both the women and the youth of Barry Farm Dwellings, then public housing, were at the forefront of the fight to improve their lives and those of their neighbors in the 1960s, but community identity was being subsumed into the larger Anacostia neighborhood. Curator and historian Alcione M. Amos tells these little-remembered stories.

Barry Farm-Hillsdale was created under the auspices of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1867 in what was then the outskirts of the nation's capital. Residents built churches and schools, and the community became successful. In the 1940s, youth from the community courageously desegregated the Anacostia Pool, and the Barry Farm Dwellings was built to house war workers. In the 1950s, community parents joined the fight to desegregate schools in Washington, D.C., as local leaders fought off plans to redevelop the area. Both the women and the youth of Barry Farm Dwellings, then public housing, were at the forefront of the fight to improve their lives and those of their neighbors in the 1960s, but community identity was being subsumed into the larger Anacostia neighborhood. Curator and historian Alcione M. Amos tells these little-remembered stories--back covers.

"Before chain coffeeshops and luxury high-rises, before even the beginning of desegregation and the 1968 riots, Washington's Greater U Street was known as Black Broadway. From the early 1900s into the 1950s, African Americans plagued by Jim Crow laws in other parts of town were free to own businesses here and built what was often described as a "city within a city." Local author and journalist Briana A. Thomas narrates U Street's rich and unique history, from the early triumph of emancipation to the days of civil rights pioneer Mary Church Terrell and music giant Duke Ellington, through the recent struggle of gentrifiction" --

Monumental in scope and vividly detailed, Chocolate City tells the tumultuous, four-century story of race and democracy in our nation's capital. Emblematic of the ongoing tensions between America's expansive democratic promises and its enduring racial realities, Washington often has served as a national battleground for contentious issues, including slavery, segregation, civil rights, the drug war, and gentrification. But D.C. is more than just a seat of government, and authors Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove also highlight the city's rich history of local activism as Washingtonians of all races have struggled to make their voices heard in an undemocratic city where residents lack full political rights. Tracing D.C.'s massive transformations--from a sparsely inhabited plantation society into a diverse metropolis, from a center of the slave trade to the nation's first black-majority city, from "Chocolate City" to "Latte City--Asch and Musgrove offer an engaging narrative peppered with unforgettable characters, a history of deep racial division but also one of hope, resilience, and interracial cooperation.

Most of 14th Street is Gone takes an in-depth look at the destructive riots that erupted in Washington, DC in April 1968. This book offers an unprecedentedly detailed account of the riots that raged in the nation's capital from the perspectives of rioters, victims, law enforcement officials, soldiers, and government leaders.

In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just twenty-three years old, completed a series of sixty small tempera paintings with text captions about the Great Migration. Within months of its making, Lawrence's Migration series was divided between The Museum of Modern Art (even numbered panels) and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (odd numbered panels). The work has since become a landmark in the history of African-American art, a monument in the collections of both institutions, and a crucial example of the way in which history painting was radically reimagined in the modern era. In 2015 and 2016, marking the centenary of the Great Migration's start (1915-16), the panels will be reunited in exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art and then The Phillips Collection. Published to accompany the exhibition, this publication both grounds Lawrence's Migration series in the cultural and political debates that shaped the young artist's work and highlights the series' continued resonance for artists and writers working today. An essay by Leah Dickerman situates the series in relation to heady contemporary discussions of the artist's role as a social agent; a growing imperative to write - and give image to - black history in the late 1930s and early 1940s; and an emergent sense of activist politics. Elsa Smithgall traces the exhibition history of the Migration panels from their display at the Downtown Gallery in New York in 1941 to their acquisition by MoMA and the Phillips Collection a year later. Short commentaries on each panel explore Lawrence's career and painting technique and aspects of the social history of the Migration portrayed in his images. The catalogue also debuts ten poems newly commissioned from acclaimed poets written in response to the Migration series. Elizabeth Alexander (honoured as the poet at President Obama's first inauguration) introduces the poetry project with a discussion of the poetic quality of Lawrence's work, as well as the impact and legacy of the poets in his orbit including Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.

“Reconstruct[s] Douglass’s life in the nation’s capital, both at home and in the halls of power, in ways that no other biographer has done” (Leigh Fought, author of Women in the World of Frederick Douglass). The remarkable journey of Frederick Douglass from fugitive slave to famed orator and author is well recorded. Yet little has been written about Douglass’s final years in Washington, DC. Journalist John Muller explores how Douglass spent the last eighteen years of his life professionally and personally in his home, Cedar Hill, in Anacostia. The ever-active Douglass was involved in local politics, from aiding in the early formation of Howard University to editing a groundbreaking newspaper to serving as marshal of the District. During this time, his wife of forty-four years, Anna Murray, passed away, and eighteen months later, he married Helen Pitts, a white woman. Unapologetic for his controversial marriage, Douglass continued his unabashed advocacy for the rights of African Americans and women and his belief in American exceptionalism. Through meticulous research, Muller has created a fresh and intimate portrait of Frederick Douglass of Anacostia. Includes photos! “Muller’s book connects Douglass to the city and neighborhood the way no other project has yet been able to . . . you’re able to re-imagine the man and re-consider the possibilities of the place he once lived.” —Martin Austermuhle, DCist

Draws a direct line between redlining, incarceration, and gentrification in an American city. This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrification in Washington, DC. In Before Gentrification, Tanya Maria Golash-Boza tracks the cycles of state abandonment and punishment that have shaped the city, revealing how policies and policing work to displace and decimate the Black middle class. Through the stories of those who have lost their homes and livelihoods, Golash-Boza explores how DC came to be the nation's "murder capital" and incarceration capital, and why it is now a haven for wealthy White people. This troubling history makes clear that the choice to use prisons and policing to solve problems faced by Black communities in the twentieth century—instead of investing in schools, community centers, social services, health care, and violence prevention—is what made gentrification possible in the twenty-first. Before Gentrification unveils a pattern of anti-Blackness and racial capitalism in DC that has implications for all US cities.

The Reconstruction era was born from the tumult and violence of the Civil War and delivered the most powerful changes the United States had seen since its founding. Black Americans in Washington, D.C., and its surrounding region were at the heart of these transformations, bravely working to reunite their families, build their communities, and claim rights long denied them. Meanwhile, in the capital, government leaders struggled to reunite and remake the nation. Famous individuals such as Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells played central roles, as did lesser-known figures like Emma Brown, the first African American teacher in Washington's public schools, and lawyer-journalist William Calvin Chase, longtime editor of the Washington Bee. Freedom Was in Sight! draws on the words and experiences of people who lived during Reconstruction, powerfully narrating how the impacts of emancipation and civil war rippled outward for decades. Vividly drawn by award-winning graphic artist Liz Clarke and written by Pulitzer Prize–finalist Kate Masur, a leading historian of Reconstruction, this rich graphic history reveals the hopes and betrayals of a critical period in American history.

This book traces the history of the U Street neighborhood in Washington, D.C., from its Civil War–era origins to its recent gentrification. Home throughout the years to important scholars, entertainers, and political figures, as well as to historically prominent African American institutions, Washington’s U Street neighborhood is a critical zone of contact between black and white America. Howard University and the Howard Theater are both located there; Duke Ellington grew up in the neighborhood; and diplomat Ralph Bunche, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and medical researcher Charles Drew were all members of the community. This robustly diverse neighborhood included residents of different races and economic classes when it arose during the Civil War. Jim Crow laws came to the District after the Compromise of 1877, and segregation followed in the mid-1880s. Over the next century, U Street emerged as an energetic center of African American life in Washington. The mid-twentieth-century rise of cultural and educational institutions brought with it the establishment of African American middle and elite classes, ironically fostering biases within the black community. Later, with residential desegregation, many of the elites moved on and U Street entered decades of decline, suffered rioting in 1968, but has seen an initially fitful resurgence that has recently taken hold. Blair A. Ruble, a jazz aficionado, prominent urbanist, and longtime resident of Washington, D.C., is uniquely equipped to undertake the history of this culturally important area. His work is a rare instance of original research told in an engaging and compelling voice.