Strong Families and Eminent Citizens 15th and t streets nw
the fine rowhouses in this neighborhood were once home to many of the community’s old families and most distinguished citizens. Charles Hamilton Houston, a national leader in civil rights, was born one block south of here in the 1400 block of Swann Street. A prominent African American lawyer and Howard University profes- sor, he worked with his most famous student, the future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, to develop the arguments that would end legal segregation in America. Marshall, who used these arguments to win the famous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, credited Houston with laying the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement. The red-brick corner house at 1461 S Street was home to the African American poet Georgia Douglas Johnson, a writer associated with the flowering of African American literature and art in the 1920 s and 1930 s known as the New Negro (or Harlem) Renaissance. Every Saturday night Johnson opened her home to artists and writ- ers, making it the heart of the Renaissance in Washington. Among her guests were writer Jean Toomer (author of Cane ), the poet Langston Hughes, and Howard University professor Alain Locke, who first named and defined the Renaissance in his 1925 book, The New Negro. This was also a neighborhood of strong families, many of whom had been in Washington for generations. Some traced their ancestry back to the city’s large pre-Civil War free black population. Noted African American photographer Addison Scurlock took their portraits and recorded their rites of passage on film — births, graduations, debutante parties, and weddings. His presence in the community was so strong that a local wag once said, “If he didn’t photograph your wedding, you weren’t married.”
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