Beyond the Basics

Beyond the Basics. Lift Every Voice. , During the Civil War, thousands of once-enslaved people crowded into DC, desperate for shelter, work, and protection. Most vulnerable were orphans and children separated from their families. In 1863 the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children opened a shelter for them in Georgetown. , The National Home, managed by prominent African American women, was the city’s only foster facility for black children. It taught them basic writing, math and trades and placed them for adoption. Eventually the home moved to 733 Euclid Street. The National Home’s successor donated its building to the Emergent Community Arts Collective, which opened in 2006. , Dolores Tucker, who grew up at 1000 Euclid, remembered a neighborhood filled with schools and teachers. After Tucker’s mother Gladys Williams left teaching to raise her family, “teachers on their way to school used to stop at our home to have coffee with my mother…It was Grand Central Station.” , On the southeast corner of Georgia Avenue and Fairmont, Italian immigrants Frank and Mary Guerra opened the original Howard Delicatessen in 1923. In 1988 Kenny Gilmore took over the business. Gilmore, godson to the Guerra’s daughter, had grown up two doors away and worked in the deli as a young boy. , Captions: , Children of the Merriweather Home (successor to the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children) set the table, left, and dress for a Girl Scouts meeting, 1963., Howard Delicatessen's first owners Mary, left, and Frank Guerra with their daughter Grace Guerra (Urciolo). Below, their successor Kenny Gilmore, with broom, coped with construction on Georgia Ave. in 1991. , Dolores Williams leads mother Gladys and brother Theodore out of their home at 1000 Euclid on her wedding day, 1959. , Arthur Ashe, who won a youth championship at Banneker Recreation Center in the 1950s, returned to hold a tennis clinic there in 1969. , Students at Banneker Junior High School (later Banneker High School), 1942., Local children attended Miner Normal School’s “practice” elementary school, around 1900. , Library of Congress