The Roots of Freedom and Equality

The Roots of Freedom and Equality. Civil War to Civil Rights.

"It is known to you that events have transpired within the last few days, deeply affecting the peace and character of our community."

, With these words, city officials tried to calm the angry mob gathering on this corner in April 1848. The crowd blamed the National Era, an abolitionist newspaper with offices located near this sign, for the attempted escape of some 77 enslaved African Americans on the schooner Pearl. The mob threatened to destroy the Era's printing press. The editor, Gamaliel Bailey, was one of many anti-slavery activists who made Washington, D.C. a national center for abolitionist activity. He regularly wrote of the irony of slavery in the capital of a nation dedicated to liberty and equality., Tragically, most of the captured freedom-seekers were sold and taken south. The mayor and others quelled the potential riot, the National Era survived to continue its mission. In 1851 and 1852 the Era serialized a novel by a little-known author named Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, sold 300,000 copies its first year. The dramatic story intensified anti-slavery feelings and sectional rivalries and, many believe, made war inevitable., One hundred years later, on this same block, Charles Hamilton Houston continued the struggle for freedom and equality for African Americans. Houston, an attorney practicing at 615 F Street and a professor of law at Howard University, taught Thurgood Marshall the legal strategies that led to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional (Brown v. Board of Education). Marshall, later a Supreme Court Justice, credited Houston as the person who laid the groundwork for the modern Civil Rights movement.