Recovered History: Sojourner Truth

Sam Smith - Sojourner Truth holds a special place in my heart not just because she was an early feminist and abolitionist, but because she shared my long interest in improving DC mass transit. To be sure, her approach was infinitely more moral and successful than mine. As the Hudson Valley Times noted, "In 1864, Sojourner Truth was thrown off a trolley in Washington, DC, and sued both the trolley car company and the conductor – and won. Truth exercised her human rights long before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus."

The incident is one of many not generally known about America's last colony. In fact, the segregation history of the capital is far more complex than generally realized. Here was a town that had segregated public schools into the 1950s yet whose and streetcars were integrated. In fact, on trollies that crossed the Potomac, blacks had to change their seating on the bridge to obey Virginia's more racist laws. It is part of the fascinating story of how Washington was both part of the south and a gateway out of it.

Wendell E. Pritchett, Institute of American History -  The history of the civil rights movement is the story of numerous grassroots campaigns loosely coordinated and assisted by a small number of national organizations. Every local struggle had its own actors, issues, and nuances, and all of them contributed to the broader struggle against Jim Crow. No battle exemplifies the interaction of the local and national better than the campaign for equal rights in the nation’s capital, Washington, DC.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s, civil rights activists in Washington waged a battle against racial discrimination in the city that had always been viewed as a symbol of our democracy. Their story reveals the deep connections between social scientists, activists, an emerging web of new and old civil rights organizations, and the nation’s liberal elite at the mid-twentieth century. The story also contributes to our understanding of the development of liberal theories of race relations and shows the important role of symbolism in the attack on Jim Crow.

Segregation was a powerful institution in postwar DC, just as it was in the rest of the South, but the city’s race-relations history was complex and constantly changing. The city boasted a large and influential free black population during the antebellum era. After the Civil War, the relatively benign rule of the federal government made DC a mecca for America’s black elite. The men and women who belonged to this elite group created numerous significant institutions to promote their interests, including Howard University. In the early twentieth century, however, DC blacks, like those across the nation, witnessed the erection of many barriers to economic and social progress. During the Taft and Wilson administrations, Jim Crow regulations increasingly restricted the movements and opportunities of the capital’s black citizens, and DC’s black population became the focal point of actions taken by segregationists in Congress.

African Americans fought these efforts in a variety of ways and with increasing effort. During the 1930s, DC was a leader in the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” movement, and blacks aggressively protested discrimination in employment...

After World War II, activists stepped up their attacks on Jim Crow in DC... These efforts were aided by the work of President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights. The committee’s 1947 report, “To Secure These Rights,” reserved special opprobrium for DC. Calling the District a “graphic illustration of a failure of democracy,” the committee recommended several congressional actions to rectify the situation, including eliminating segregation in public schools, prohibiting segregation in public facilities, and outlawing restrictive housing covenants. The report, a landmark in the history of civil rights, brought increased attention to the scourge of discrimination in DC and around the nation...

The report ... examined several aspects of segregation in the city, describing the almost complete exclusion of blacks by eating establishments in the downtown area and the restrictions imposed on black customers in commercial operations. It also described the vise-like grip that housing discrimination placed on black residents. Excluded from newly developed areas in the outlying sections of DC, blacks were forced to find accommodations in the declining and overcrowded interior. In addition, the report detailed the continuing restrictions on employment despite the explosion of civil service jobs. Although new agencies like the Office of Price Administration proved that integrated offices could function efficiently, many federal agencies—the worst example was the State Department—still practiced a rigid discrimination that limited blacks to the lowest-ranking positions...

Segregation also applied to after-school programs, run by the recreation department, where the system was so rigidly imposed that the city even named two annual champions (one white, one black) in marbles tournaments...

Just days after the report’s release, the Civilian Aeronautics Administration declared that it would bar any discrimination at facilities of the National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Airport). J.A. Krug, the Secretary of the Interior Department, which was negotiating to turn over operation of several District facilities to the local recreation department, declared that his department would not complete the transfer until the recreation department eliminated its requirement of racial segregation in its facilities.

The most interesting outcome of the report was an effort to resuscitate the District’s nineteenth-century “lost” discrimination laws. During their research, committee members discovered that in 1872 and 1873, the Council of the District of Columbia had passed laws giving blacks equal rights in all places of public accommodation, including restaurants and hotels. These laws had never been repealed, but had been surreptitiously removed from the DC code sometime in the early 1900s. To push the local government to acknowledge the validity of the laws, a group of District activists formed the Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of DC Anti-Discrimination Laws. Led by Mary Church Terrell, an 88-year-old African American, who was virtually an institution in the District and was the scion of one of its most famous families, the group directed a three-prong attack on public segregation, which consisted of lobbying the DC government, initiating legal action to secure the enforcement of the statutes, and protesting at those commercial facilities that refused to integrate..

By the early 1950s, segregation in the District was a national disgrace, and one that could not be met with arguments of states’ rights. The efforts of local and national activists reveal the multifaceted approach of civil rights lawyers, activists, and liberal institutions to promote civil rights in the postwar years. By highlighting the corrosive effect of segregation on the nation’s capital, a vital symbol of democracy, activists were able to change the terms of debate and, therefore, the law. Their efforts shaped the understanding of the Supreme Court justices, who in 1954 issued the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.