I'm gonna take a trip this evening, I'm gonna go way back home, I'm gonna look at your past this evening. Listen to me, the slaves talking, talk about it. Imagine being kidnapped or sold into captivity, forced into submission through violent beatings, torture, and intimidation.
Sold on the auction block to the highest bidder, and being forced to work for free under the most cruel, deplorable conditions. And it's all perfectly legal. This was the existence for blacks enduring the horrific institution of enslavement in our nation's early years. For enslaved blacks, it was more than being forced to work without compensation, but a way of life, reaching every crack and crevice of human existence.
After 1620, when indentured servitude was changed into the permanent state of slavery, permanent state of the institution of slavery. The Virginia colonists passed a series of laws that are called the slave codes. And these slave codes are codified into law.
to restrict and prohibit enslaved people from having access to government, from having access to private enterprise, as well as prohibiting enslaved people from having relationship between wife to husband. Husband to children and subsequently the ownership of property. Complete prohibition in every phase of life to control and maintain enslaved people as property of slave owners or slave masters. Just as the District of Columbia, our nation's capital, was carved out of land from Maryland and Virginia, so too were its slave laws. But by the early to mid-1800s, with the number of free blacks growing in the district and the anti-slavery movement picking up steam, the climate in our nation's capital began to change.
We, as the human race, Should never suppress, never enslave, never oppress, and never treat our fellow humans indifferent. The lesson from this is that freedom, liberation, equality, and justice should be for all, and oppression and slavery for none. As a symbolic center of a young nation, the struggle to end slavery in the District of Columbia had more meaning than in any other place in the Union.
Slavery in the District of Columbia is significant because Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States. This was not lost on slaveholders, it wasn't lost on the abolitionists, nor was it lost on the enslaved population and the free black population. They realized that the fight for emancipation in the district would be a fight for freedom throughout the United States. In 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Philadelphia.
Its members flooded Congress with thousands of petitions demanding an end to slavery and the slave trade in the district. Hoping to avoid a brutal showdown on Capitol Hill, members of the House of Representatives devised a strategy known as the gag rule, which automatically postponed or tabled any petitions on the over 100,000 anti-slavery petitions sent to the House of Representatives. We have scores of petitions and memorials that were received by Congress. from progressive white communities, from African Americans. We have letters and so forth.
So that is a battle that went from the designation of Washington, D.C. as the national capital. Former President John Quincy Adams, then in his 70s, began a nine-year battle against the gag rule, which was finally repealed in 1844. While the legislative battle against... Slavery raged on Capitol Hill. Freed blacks and white abolitionists in the district played a critical role in a clandestine effort to move enslaved persons to freedom, known as the Underground Railroad.
The Chesapeake, I'm talking about Virginia, Maryland, D.C., and Delaware, the Upper South, is the pathway from slavery to freedom because you have an area in which individuals, black and white, are going to actively aid. those seeking freedom. All they have to do is to get across the Potomac or somehow catch a boat across the bay, get to Baltimore, and from there they can go to Delaware, they can make it to Philadelphia, they can make it to New Jersey, they can make it to New York. Among the many African Americans in Washington who risked their lives hiding fugitive slaves was Anthony Bowen.
Bowen was born enslaved in Maryland in 1805. He later moved to Washington where as a young man he purchased his freedom in 1830 for $425. A dedicated abolitionist and religious leader, Bowen met freedom seekers at the 6th Street Wharf and sheltered them in his home, which served as an important stop along the Underground Railroad. Washingtonians worked to guarantee freedom, not just for themselves, but for individuals like my great-great-grandfather, a slave in Virginia.
They made freedom real for individuals all over the nation. In 1853, Bowen organized the nation's first African-American YMCA in Washington. Throughout the early 1800s, the brutality of the institution of slavery was routinely on display in the nation's capital. The markets that sprang up in Washington, D.C.
formed the busiest area in the country for the buying and selling of slaves. For abolitionists, the slave markets located in the center of the nation represented what they called the national shame. This practice of purchasing and selling slaves in the district had become an embarrassment for the national government.
And many, many Europeans, as visitors to the nation's capital, took this nation to task to see this heart-wrenching selling of individuals, separating children from mothers. It was very difficult. Although opponents to slavery were ever more vocal, slavery in the District of Columbia continued throughout the early 1800s. By 1835, however, those who held people enslaved were increasingly concerned by a series of insurrections and escape attempts. Memories were still fresh of Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion, just 180 miles south of D.C.
in Southampton, Virginia. Turner and a band of runaway slaves had killed upwards of 50 white people with axes before it all came to an end. The violent and dramatic incident was now on the minds of the residents of the district. In August of that year, a peculiar confrontation between an 18-year-old slave named Arthur Bowen and a 60-year-old white socialite named Mrs. Anna Marie Thornton set off a series of explosive events.
One evening after engaging in a debate at the 15th Street Presbyterian Church. Arthur Bowen was inebriated at the time and was walking into the house, and as he walked into the house, he picked up an axe and put it on his arm as he was walking in. Anna Marie Thornton, Marie Bowen, who was Arthur Bowen's mother, was in the bedroom, and when he walked in, he startled them.
And as a result of startling them, Anna Marie Thornton rushes out of the house and she was met by the physician of Andrew Jackson and she shared the story of Arthur Bowen walking into the house with an axe on his arm. Then it becomes a part of an alleged attack on the mistress, Anna Marie Thornton, which created the chaos and the havoc that took place, known as the Snow Riot of 1835, here in the District of Columbia. The alleged attack became just one of several sparks that would soon set off an outbreak of violence in the nation's capital.
Once Arthur Bowens was captured and incarcerated at the D.C. jail, which was located in Judiciary Square, the Irish mechanics who were angry because they felt that the enslaved persons were taking jobs away from them, and with the backdrop of the Nat Turner insurrection of 1831 and to... avenge the alleged attack on Anna Marie Thornton, they wanted to get Arthur Bowen out of jail and then hang him.
The policemen prohibited the mechanics from gaining access to Arthur Bowen. So subsequently, they marched down the street to 6th and Pennsylvania. Avenue, they destroyed the restaurant of Beverly Snow because they could not gain access to Arthur Bowen. One has to realize that by 1835, the number of African Americans who were free outnumbered the number of enslaved African Americans in the district.
So that played into the attitude and the behavior of the Irish mechanics. Let me just emphasize that during this period, mechanics are basically laborers in the city, general laborers in the city. And so they waged this campaign of terror on Beverly Snow as an example or as an example of a symbol to suppress the abolitionist movement, to suppress the movement for freedom, liberation, and equality and emancipation.
So therefore, Beverly Snow's restaurant becomes a symbol of their attack. Arthur Bowen was found guilty of attempted murder on Anna Marie Thornton. Anna Marie Thornton...
knew and felt that Arthur Bowen truly was not trying to attack her. And she started a petition to free Arthur Bowen. Through that petition, Andrew Jackson stayed the execution three times.
On the third appeal from Anna Marie Thornton, he pardoned Arthur Bowen. And this is the role that he played in the Snow Ride of 1830. which should probably have been called the Arthur Bowen right rather than the Beverly Snow right because it was more about Arthur Bowen than it was about Beverly Snow. In 1848, the District of Columbia was home to a combustible mix of slaves, freed blacks, pro-slavery whites, and abolitionists.
It was also the setting for the single largest attempted slave escape in U.S. history, a daring and dramatic bid for freedom aboard the Pearl. It's very hard to have any precise picture, but it is estimated that throughout the country, about a thousand slaves per year either ran away or... tried to run away.
But the penalty for running away was very high, very high. Sometimes if they lived in the upper south where life was not too hard, they were sold to New Orleans. Sometimes they were beaten viciously.
Nearly 37,000 people lived in the district at that time. About 8,000 of them were free black people and 4,000 were slaves. Some tried to buy their freedom. Others tried to run away, often by way of the Underground Railroad.
William Chaplin, a radical abolitionist known for helping several slaves escape, was enlisted by a free black couple, Daniel and Mary Bell, who were trying to secure the freedom of their own children. It was the Bells who initiated the planning for the Pearl escape. When the Bells asked him to arrange for ten, This was a very large number and very difficult, and this is why he asked a man he knew in Philadelphia to arrange for a ship, and that's how the Pearl got involved. That Philadelphia man was Daniel Drayton, a ship's captain who once helped a family of six slaves escape.
Daniel Drayton himself was a Methodist who had become alienated from the Methodist church because he felt they did not... tried to end slavery. He had a large family.
He realized that they were in want, and for that reason, he most reluctantly accepted the $100 offered to him for bringing off the slaves. He knew how dangerous it was. Drayton sought the help of Edmund Sayers, also a ship's captain, who owned a schooner called the Pearl. Reduced to using the pearl for hauling and selling coal, Sayers reluctantly agreed to come to Washington because he needed the $100. Paul Edmondson, a free black man and father of another large family of slaves, was also seeking freedom for his children aboard the pearl.
Because his wife Amelia was a slave, all 14 of her children were legally slaves also. And as soon as the children reached the appropriate age, their owner rented them out. because they were rented out in Washington, that they heard about a ship coming to take the Bell family to freedom. And so they approached Chaplin and said, could we get on board the ship?
And so they were among the people who waited with bated breath to find out whether or not they would be allowed to get on board the Pearl. When Drayton said, I'll take anybody that wants to come, they did. The Edmondsons were among the first to get on board.
That night, 76 slaves, men, women, and children, slipped down to the ship and got on board. I think so often of how desperate people were to achieve freedom. Because think of what the Pearl was like. It was a broken down old schooner.
It had been hauling coal. Nobody did anything to clean it up, and yet they were grateful. They were willing, they were anxious to get on board.
So on the evening of April 15, 1848, the passengers aboard the Pearl, old and young, male and female. Mothers with children set sail on a daring 225-mile quest for freedom, but by daylight, their slave owners realized something was amiss. They recognized the next morning, because all of the things that domestic slaves were supposed to do had not been done. They were absolutely furious. A posse soon formed and set out in a steamboat on the Potomac to capture the runaway slaves.
When the steamboat saw the Pearl, there was much shouting, halleluing, because they had found the ship that they were looking for. Drayton and Sayers were taken on board the steamboat and the Pearl was tugged back up the Potomac to Washington, where they anchored at the foot of 7th Street. But it was sisters Mary and Emily Edmondson who later would become the Pearl's most famous passenger.
As they marched up 7th Street, this is in downtown Washington, the crowd grew much larger. By this time, the crowd had grown threatening. There were cries of, lynch him, lynch him, the damned villains.
There were taunts and jeers at every step. According to another account, people were shouting, drag him out, knock his damned brains out, shoot him, shoot the hell home. One of the bystanders is supposed to have said, To fugitive Emily Edmondson, aren't you ashamed to run away and make all this trouble for everybody?
She replied, no sir, we are not, and if we had to go through it again, we'd do the same thing. The runaway slaves were returned to their owners, and most of them were sold. But it was sisters Mary and Emily Edmondson who later would become the Pearl's most famous passengers. Drayton and Sayers were found guilty of transporting slaves for the purpose of escape and sentenced to long prison terms. But a few years later, President Millard Fillmore decided to pardon Drayton and Sayers.
Yet after the Pearl's capture, Mary and Emily Edmondson and four of their brothers were quickly shipped off to the lucrative slave market of New Orleans. The brothers were easily sold, but Mary and Emily's story didn't end there. They were beautiful. They were young and they had lovely singing voices. And so it was assumed that they would be sold to be fancy girls in New Orleans.
But then it appeared that they were in peril of catching whatever fever it was that was killing people in New Orleans. And so they were sent back, first to Baltimore and then to Alexandria, where? They hoped that somebody would buy their freedom.
The Edmondson sisters were eventually freed and educated with the help of noted abolitionist, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Though Mary died young, Emily Edmondson became an abolitionist herself and went on to work with Frederick Douglass and others. The human drama at the center of the attempted escape on the Pearl mirrored the deepening drama of the coming Civil War. This was a terrible thing that had happened.
It was a terrible thing because it had happened right next to the capital of the United States. And consequently, people all over the South were totally enraged, and I suspect this incident... It was one of the reasons that the search for fugitive slaves was really tightened up in a law that was passed known as the Compromise of 1850, which made it obligatory to help people recover the slaves. Now, also a part of that law was a measure providing that the slave trade would be ended in the district, not slavery. Slavery remained until 1862, but it was at least a recognition that there was, by this time, in the United States, a growing opposition to the institution of slavery.
Providing compensation to slave owners was not a new idea in 1862. In fact, as early as 1833, Great Britain abolished slavery and compensated slave owners for their freed slaves. The idea was tested in the nation's capital with the help of a dedicated abolitionist, Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson. He was a man not only who empathized with enslaved people and not only who was horrified by seeing it firsthand on this.
his visits to the district. He deserves to be much better recognized. Not only is he the author of compensated emancipation in the district, but he would also go on to write the law that would smash the black codes in D.C.
He would introduce the first post-Civil War civil rights legislation. He would be the 18th Vice President of the United States under Grant and Chairman of the Military Affairs Committee of the Union during the Civil War. And yet if you...
go to his grave, it's a plain stone sepulcher with no mention of all of these achievements. Eventually, Wilson takes his passion to end slavery to Capitol Hill, where as a senator from Massachusetts, he introduces the District of Columbia Emancipation Act in December of 1861. The mechanics of the Compensated Emancipation Act were relatively simple. The idea was that slave owners in the District of Columbia would submit, essentially, claims describing their enslaved persons, these claims and indeed the enslaved persons. would be evaluated by a dealer in, of all places, Baltimore.
Ultimately, slave owners got about an average of $300 per enslaved person. There were over 900 claimants, over 900 claimants. Wilson's Act into law on April 16, 1862. D.C. Emancipation was celebrated as no other celebration in the African-American community. It was the height of a social season for many years.
Freedom from enslavement in America involved many long and difficult struggles, slave rebellions, attempted escape, and even fighting and dying in a bloody war between the states. The number of African Americans that fought in the Civil War was approximately quarter of a million. That would include United States colored troops, African Americans had fight in United States volunteer units and in the US Navy. The number of African Americans that lost their lives during the Civil War was approximately 40,000.
But wartime sacrifice did not end the struggle for full freedom and equality. Nor would the enactment of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the United States. Nor the 14th Amendment granting blacks their rights as citizens. and not even the 15th Amendment, which granted all men the right to vote. The conscription of black troops in the Civil War began a new chapter in the continuing struggle for freedom, equality, and justice.
When the Civil War began, it was not legal for men of African descent to join the Federal Army. In 1792, Congress had banned the enlistment of men of African descent into the Federal Army. In July of 1862, Congress gave President Lincoln the authority to recruit men of African descent into the federal army. But just how were slaves of African descent convinced to fight in the Civil War? What were they promised?
How did they fight? And most importantly, what did they gain? How does the enslaved African American receive the news that he now has the opportunity to fight and win his freedom? With wild enthusiasm would be the words used by John S. Rock.
The first African American to be admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court. It was with wild enthusiasm that these enslaved Americans could now join the Union Army, fight and win their own freedoms, but not only their own freedom, but the freedom of their own family.
They could become the emancipators, the great emancipators, if you will, the liberators of their own families. This was an opportunity of a lifetime. To assist recruitment efforts, abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote a newspaper editorial entitled Men of Color to Arms. Douglass urged blacks to earn their equality and show their patriotism by fighting in the Union cause. The Massachusetts 54th Regiment was the first black unit to be formed.
Two of his first recruits were his youngest son, Charles Douglass, and his eldest son, Louis Douglass. who both enlisted in the 54th Massachusetts when it was first organized in February of 1863. His eldest son, Lewis Douglas, was quite skilled in drill when he got there, and he became the lead drill sergeant of the 54th Massachusetts. The order from the War Department, published in May of 1863, created a separate bureau of the U.S. Army.
This separate Bureau of the U.S. Army is where all the United States Colored Troop regiments were mustered into service. So even the 54th Massachusetts, which retains its state designation, was brought in to the Bureau of United States Colored Troops.
Although recruitment speeches promised black soldiers equality in the Union Army, they were not treated equally. Yet they performed with distinction. Their courage on the battlefield really changed the opinion. of many Americans of European descent, because it was very clear after watching those soldiers on the battlefield that men of African descent could in fact fight.
President Lincoln said that the war against the South could not have been won without the help of the black freedmen. The first Emancipation Day commemoration was celebrated four years after the passage of the D.C. Emancipation Act. This was also the first anniversary following the end of the Civil War.
And that particular... celebration began, people wanted to celebrate it. The war was over and this was just one of many sort of celebrations around the country. On April 19, 1866, thousands of spectators lined the streets of D.C.
on a sunny day to see the parade. The only visual depiction is a drawing from Harper's Weekly magazine. What you would see would be the parade beginning at a certain place that had been pre-established.
And it would generally open with the president of the parade in sort of an open carriage. And then all of these various militia groups. Following the Civil War, many of the black veterans and persons who had been in what would be equivalent to a National Guard, continued these paramilitary activities. Rain or shine, many of the Emancipation Day parades saw rain. The people were still out.
They would have umbrellas or they would just be wet and bedraggled. And they marched all over town. Can you imagine marching that distance today?
We can barely go five or six blocks. These people went all over town. Then after the parade, they would convene at some spot and then have speeches. The first black person elected to Congress from Virginia, John Mercer Langston, was a regular speaker.
He took part in the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park on April 14, 1876. It depicts... A kneeling man of color breaking his chains and a statue then of Lincoln handing him the Emancipation Proclamation. The monument was funded entirely by the contributions of freed slaves. The man, Archer Alexander, was the last person to be captured under the Fugitive Slave Act. Emancipation speeches conveyed awareness by acknowledging the lack of rights for people of color.
Not unlike the Civil Rights Act that followed, the Emancipation Act freed slaves on paper, but denial of basic rights continued in practice. And one of the, actually one of the speakers in one of the emancipation... Day celebration said this, that the Emancipation Act freed us physically as slaves, but we are still political slaves. And that is as true today as it was then.
With the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, slavery was abolished and African Americans were given the right to vote. Despite the progress, newly freed blacks faced an array of daunting social obstacles. To deal with these issues, the Union began an era known as Reconstruction.
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Representative Thaddeus Stevens were among a group of congressional members known as Radical Republicans, who dedicated themselves to crafting Reconstruction legislation aimed at protecting and educating freedmen until they were able to provide for themselves. The most important piece of legislation that was introduced by these Radical Republicans was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, or Freedmen Bureau, which was the... bureau that was established as a result of public policy to provide education, housing, medical, employment, and opportunities for African Americans. Established in 1865, the Freedmen's Bureau was headed up by Civil War hero, Union Army General Oliver Howard.
In his role as Commissioner of the Bureau, Howard promoted the welfare and education of former slaves. He played an integral part. In establishing schools for African Americans, Howard University is one of those schools that come out of the Freedmen's Bureau that was established in 1867, as well as schools here in Washington, D.C. that were established on the land of what we know today as Berry Farms, a farm that was owned by James Berry. Another hero of the Freedmen's Bureau was Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson.
Wilson began his career as a shoemaker. but went on to become a leading abolitionist. Wilson was instrumental in crafting legislation to end slavery and also served as the vice president on the Ulysses S. Grant.
After he became vice president and president of the Senate, he continued his roles to fight for our people. African Americans for civil rights and liberties and equalities, and so he's a great hero. I can never emphasize enough that he was author of the D.C.
compensated emancipation legislation that became law and freed enslaved people here in the District of Columbia, our first on 16 April 1862. During Reconstruction, former slaves were given the right to vote, and as a result, the nation's first black senators were elected. But the advances would not continue. With the controversial election of 1876 and the Jim Crow laws that followed, much of the historic gains during Reconstruction would evaporate.
In the period of 1867 to 1871, this is the period right after the Civil War and before D.C. became a territory, before Congress instituted territorial government in D.C., you have some drastic changes in the city. And it all starts with African Americans petitioning for the right to vote, for universal suffrage. They believe that, particularly with the acquisition of the vote in 1867, They would be able to essentially erect a new social order in the district that would have far-reaching political ramifications. So you had in the city already a black community with its own black elite.
And now, added to that, you have leaders who have attracted to the city due to, you know, government, Congress, and things that are happening. People like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass and others. John Mercer Langston, Augusta Alexander. And, you know, they're also attracted to some of the black institutions that have cropped up at this time, such as Howard University and the Freedmen's Bureau. By 1871, blacks in the district had made many strides in the quest for equality.
But with mounting pressure from whites in the city, Congress and the president instituted a territorial form of government in order to gain control over black political and social mobility. Frederick Douglass and other blacks will continue to fight for black equality. More specifically, they will push for equal funding of schools, if not the integration of schools in the District of Columbia. And though this fails, other measures do succeed.
In 1872, the territorial government will pass another civil rights bill that will end discrimination in places of public accommodation. A hundred dollar fine will be assessed for those who violate it. But by 1874, Congress eliminated territorial government in the district, taking full control of the city and virtually snuffing out black political power and progress.
So the collapse of the territorial government gave the enemies of black political advancement an opportunity, even if white folks had to suffer, to check the... involvement of blacks in local politics in the nation's capital. In 1876, controversy surrounded the presidential election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Southern Democrats who supported Samuel Tilden for president refused to concede the race.
Their anger was fueled by gains by African Americans, which among other things, enabled blacks to vote. The stalemate threatened the union's shaky foundation as a filibuster on Capitol Hill dragged on for weeks, preventing the election of a new president. As the filibuster continued, they started to work on a compromise, and over the course of several meetings, the last one ending up, ironically, in the Wormley Hotel, which James Wormley was a local black businessman who had probably the best hotel in Washington. So the compromise was finally worked out, whereby the filibustering would stop.
The electoral votes would be given to Hayes, and in exchange, federal troops would be withdrawn from the South, and the Southerners would be left to do with the Negroes what they wanted. It really was the death knell for the freedom that had been hard fought and hard won during the Civil War. Further erosion of the gains made during Reconstruction would intensify following the landmark decision in 1896 by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. The thing about Plessy was that he was very, very light.
He could pass for white and had bought a first class ticket, so he was in the first class section. And when the conductor came to take his ticket, said, I am one-eighth black and I'm going to sit here in this car. So then the conductor... had no choice but to eject him, call the police in, and they arrested him. So he sues, and that's what ended up in the Supreme Court.
Court rejected Plessy's argument that his rights as a citizen had been violated when he was ejected from first class. Instead, the court affirmed the legal foundation of segregation policies and the doctrine separate but equal. Black activists in this country were, again, naturally alarmed. And at the same time, the violence was increasing and became a part of life. So a group of...
black intellectuals and activists got together at Niagara Falls and decided, especially because of the disenfranchisement movement going on, that they needed to organize and do something about it. Ironically, they met the next year in Harper's Ferry because that was one of the very few places in this country where a large group of black people could meet. They could get accommodations and so on.
Some of that group then met with a group of white. intellectuals and decided to form a multiracial group to fight for basically the same things. But the group attracted people of means, and so they named W.E. Du Bois as the face of the organization.
They had another conference the next year, and that's when they named it the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and really began to be very aggressive. While the loss of voting rights was disheartening, additional humiliation came after the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson. New segregationist policies in federal offices disgraced middle-class African-American civil servants.
And federal regulations prohibited African-Americans from sharing public facilities with whites. When we look at America in 1912, when he launched his inaugural campaign for president, he was a man of the time. We lived in a segregated society. We had Jim Crow, which was a firm in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. So therefore, you have a man who embodied everything that the South represented in himself as the president of the United States. He did this.
In 1919, you have almost the culmination of Wilson's presidency. He will leave office two years later. You have a regression of black rights that have been suppressed by the Wilson administration.
Wilson's southern philosophy of government clashed with the racial advances blacks had become accustomed to since the Civil War. The riot of July 1919 was a number of riots that actually occurred during the summer of 1919. That's why it's called the Red Summer. Reaping the benefits of blacks in the military, America continued to repress full rights for its citizens at home. If we look at the battle against segregation, it's necessary to understand that, again, it's part of a continuum.
That our ancestors from the time of the Civil War and before had resisted first slavery and then Jim Crow in an effort to wipe out all injustice, inequality, and indignity. The New Negro Alliance was organized in the 1930s, primarily by Belford Lawson, but a number of other, if you want to call them young Turks. And by that I mean young people who don't believe the local chapter of the NAACP is moving fast enough or boldly enough.
The New Negro Alliance did not take that name lightly. They proceeded to bring what was in their judgment, a new look at how to handle and protest racial problems. They brought a new generation of college-trained, insightful black men and women. People like Walter Washington, who's a member of the New Negro Alliance, William Hastie, Robert Weaver, and all of these people are essentially the creme de la creme of the new, the latest generation of battlers against Jim Crow in the nation's capital.
Segregation policies were confronted head-on by the cultural revolution of the New Negro Renaissance and the New Negro Alliance. Sterling Brown and Gene Toomer had local connections to... to the nation's capital, as did Georgia Douglas Johnson. From her home in the 1700 block of She organized what I call them Saturday Nighters.
They were places that people from a young A. Philip Randolph to Langston Hughes could come in a convivial setting, discuss their artistry, discuss their hopes. These discussions might be facilitated by a little alcohol, some good food, but it was a place that was a center for black thought and art for many years. In 1954, D.C.
was one of five cases in which the Supreme Court declared that separate but equal was unconstitutional. There were five states involved. The difference between Bowling and the other four, and Brown v. Board, is that President James Naber, he was later president of Howard University, fought for Bowling v. Sharp. He was the attorney for that case.
And they fought on the grounds that there was desegregation. And they wanted the schools to be integrated. They were just building the Sousa School, and they wanted the school to be integrated. This is coming from a push from a group called Consolidated Parents Group. They were out of Anacostia.
We must regard the 60s and the 70s as a special time in the history of African-Americans in the District of Columbia for all that it showed, black businesses, again, the cultural consciousness, the opportunities for black politicians. Yes, indeed, the rise of individuals like Marion Barry, John Wilson, you know, capable people, Nadine Winter, others who were able to leave a mark on this city for many decades afterwards. By 1960, the federal census documented blacks as a majority racial group in the district and the black population continued to increase well into the mid 70s. In 1975, the percentage of African Americans in Washington DC was over 70 percent, an increase of almost 20 percent from 1950-1960 period.
In short, as we take a look at the struggle for justice and dignity in the nation's capital over, let's say, the last 70 or 80 years, there are events that stick out in the mind that speak to the size of the challenge and the depth of the victory. If we take a look at the history of the United States, we see that the United States has the treatment of black citizens at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922. We take a look at the shameful treatment accorded Marian Anderson by the DAR in 1939. We see examples of some of the hardening nature of Jim Crow. But at the same time, we are comforted by the efforts of African Americans in the nation's capital during the Second World War, those who worked with A. Philip Randolph.
Those whites of conscience who believe that the D.C. should have the right to vote, even if an amendment or a legislation always did not pass, coming all the way down to the vote for president in the early 1960s, these are, and the attainment of limited home rule in the 1970s, these are important dates. Freedom, justice, to me meant a lot because citizenship, I thought, was very important for everyone throughout America. After being denied for 200 years, people in D.C. finally received the right to vote.
Once that vote was secured by us, it allowed us to vote for the President of the United States. What joy we had. But the victory in 1961 seemed to inspire civil rights leaders even more. With their spirits lifted, a group of community activists called the Black United Front successfully lobbied for home rule.
CORE was among them. Julius Hobson was a leader in CORE there for much of the time. And the Urban League organization from which I came into public life, NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
SCLC was in effect Martin Luther King's organization in Washington. In 1965, President Johnson signed the Home Rule Act, and that Home Rule Act provided for a mayor, a council, but the Congress kept the right to rule over the city. Congress did allow us to elect a non-voting representative.
who had no authority in the Congress whatever. The first elected delegate was Reverend Walter Fauntroy, a member of the Black United Front. Reverend Walter Fauntroy, of course, was one whom later went to their first elected city council, including Julius Hobson, who was a very strong activist, Marion Barry, who became a mayor for Many a Safer Life, John Wilson, who became the city council chair, David Clark.
An attorney, we're just among some of the early ones who were in the community. Jerry Moore, he was one of our great men, great preachers and great community leaders. It's interesting, Joseph Yaudel is an interesting story because we didn't really hear about Joseph Yaudel until President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to that city council.
But we had strong leadership in all of them and sometimes we were tugged at war with each other on strategies. But our goals are always the same, moving in the same direction all the time. The African-American Civil War Museum opened up in 2000 under the leadership of Dr. Frank Smith, Jr.
The founding director of the museum. He had a dream to build a memorial to these freedom fighters. And in 1998, he dedicated the African American Civil War Memorial at 10th and U Street to these soldiers.
Opened up the museum two years later, and at the African American Civil War Museum, we tell the story of these American freedom fighters who marched from slavery to freedom to become the liberators of their own families. These are our forefathers who helped save the Union, abolish slavery, and establish democracy. In fact, all Americans should be grateful to these Americans. Who make it possible for us today, in good faith, to pledge our allegiance to an indivisible republic.
A republic they helped keep together, with liberty and justice for all. They fought expressly to extend the blessings of liberty to all Americans. These are American freedom fighters, and all Americans should be proud of them, grateful to them, and especially Americans of African descent.
In 1991, the superintendent of the public schools asked everybody to be involved with the anniversary of Washington, D.C. That was the bicentennial of the District of Columbia. So reading is fundamental. I was very active in the public school.
the road to freedom and that kind of thing. So what we did is got together and started researching from the very beginning of the history of the District of Columbia and it was in 1991 that we re-established the emancipation of the District of Columbia. From then on the celebrations have gone on from there and now it's legal public holiday in the district. But it's where our research and all the people in the city, the students, the children and everybody who's involved in getting this on a good footing. My vision is to see it celebrated in every block and ward in this city and I feel that if the citizens are involved in it in their own communities with their own own celebration, parades, or just getting together and maybe putting little posters in their windows and we would just like to see it revived in an educational manner so that everybody in every ward would know what it's about.
In 2003, the celebration was revived by citizens who recognized its relevance. Politicians also saw a way to connect the celebration with the hope for freedom in the nation's capital during this century. To protest the district's lack of voting rights, advocates organized a rally at the Emancipation Day celebration in 2007. Continuing with the Emancipation celebration, it's clear... as it was not so clear then that the whole idea of enslavement affected not just black people, not just people of color, but all residents of the district and the United States. And so today's denial of the...
voting rights for citizens of the district is really the same thing. It affects not just us, but it affects all of our residents. While they have changed over the years, the principle behind Emancipation Day celebrations have remained the same. It's an opportunity to reflect in whatever way, whether you want to go to a church and hear speeches as they did in the 19th century, whether you want to go to a church and hear speeches as they whether you want to have a parade as they did in the 19th century. So-called sophisticated people in the community in the 19th century just abhorred the fact that young colored women would dance to the bands.
But that was a way of celebrating. So if that's what you want to do in this century, however you choose to do so, I think the celebration ought to continue just to remind us. what it used to be, what it is today, and what it can be.
Ain't no heart to hold,