Great Expectations

Great Expectations. Worthy Ambition. , Bloomingdale of the 1940s and '50s was a village of high expectations. Within a block of this sign lived four young women who grew up to be judges., Anna Diggs Taylor rose to chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Michigan. The daughter of Howard University's first black treasurer Virginius D. Johnston, Taylor was best known for her 2006 ruling that wiretapping citizens without a warrant is unconstitutional. Alice Gail Pollard (later Clark) was the first black District Court judge in Howard County, Maryland. Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Norma Holloway Johnson famously oversaw the 1998 grand jury investigation into President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. As a girl, Johnson left Louisiana to live with a Randolph Place relative so she could attend DC's prestigious Dunbar High School. , , Retired DC Court of Appeals Chief Judge Annice Wagner, who grew up nearby on First Street, remembered a neighborhood filled with homes and offices of black professionals. "We believed that we could become doctors, lawyers, and teachers," she said, "because we observed their achievements and they encouraged us." , , Chief Justice of Tennessee's Supreme Court Adolpho Birch, Jr., a Dunbar graduate, grew up in the nearby St. George's Episcopal Church parsonage as the son of the church's first rector. , , Physician and public health advocate Dorothy Ferebee lived at 1809 Second Street. In 1929 Dr. Ferebee opened Southeast Neighborhood House to provide health and social services in Anacostia. Later she organized the Mississippi Health Project, bringing Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority volunteers to staff mobile clinics for tenant farmers. At home, she presided over the National Council of Negro Women and directed Howard University's health services.