Existing comment:
City Within a City
Greater U Street Heritage Trail
14 Riots to Renaissance
The corner of 14th and U Streets has been a city crossroads, a neighborhood gathering place, and a stage set for events that have shaken the city and the nation.
For city residents, it was the transfer place for crosstown streetcars and buses. For the African American community, it was the heart of a business and professional downtown.
It has also been the fault line in the struggle for equal rights for black Americans in the 20th century. Some of the nation's first picket lines walked this corner in the 1930s when the New Negro Alliance protested discrimination in hiring by local businesses. Among the protesters was Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, educator, and advisor to four U.S. presidents. The 1938 United States Supreme Court decision that followed affirmed the constitutional rights that supported the sit-ins of the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
In April 1968, this corner was the flashpoint for the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The violent protest destroyed businesses along 14th Street, 7th Street, and in other parts of the city. In 1986, the Frank G. Reeves Municipal Center rose where the riots had begun, and became both a symbol and a sparkplug for a neighborhood renaissance. New restaurants, shops, and nightclubs, a new subway stop, and the restoration of historic buildings followed, and U Street is once again becoming a lively urban community. |