1. What percentage of U.S. presidents owned and sold people — 5%, 10%, 20% or 25%?
[bg_collapse view=”link” color=”#4a4949″ expand_text=”Answer” collapse_text=”- Collapse” ]Twenty-five percent. Twenty-five percent of all U.S. presidents were slaveholders and African Americans were held in bondage in the White House itself.[/bg_collapse]
2. In what year was a series of protest marches held against police brutality in D.C., following the killing of several unarmed African Americans — 1920, 1938, 1960, 1990?
[bg_collapse view=”link” color=”#4a4949″ expand_text=”Answer” collapse_text=”Collapse” ]1938. On July 8, 1938, after two more unarmed African Americans were killed by D.C. police, over 2,000 people, of whom about 20 percent were white, marched and chanted “Major Brown Must Go,” “Police Brutality Must Stop,” “Everybody Join the Parade,” and “Stop Legal Lynching.” Estimates of those who lined the streets ranged from 10,000 to 15,000. The campaign won a sharp decline in the number of police shootings, a police review board, and new political power in an early civil rights struggle in the city. Read more about the campaign.[/bg_collapse]
3. One of the school desegregation cases reviewed by the Supreme Court under Brown v. Board of Education originated in Washington, D.C. and was branded by this statement made by: Theophilus John Syphax, E. Franklin Frazier, Gardner Bishop, or Albert Cassell?
“Segregation was not only white against black, but it was also upper-class Blacks against the lower-class. We were on the bottom shelf. I’m Black and I’m poor, so I’m segregated twice.”
[bg_collapse view=”link” color=”#4a4949″ expand_text=”Answer” collapse_text=”- Collapse” ]Gardner Bishop. In 1947, Gardner Bishop, an African American barber living in Anacostia, sought to transfer his daughter Judine from the grossly overcrowded Browne Junior High to the elite African American Banneker School, where lawyers, ministers, and other professionals sent their children, but was turned down. He then tried to enroll Judine at Elliot Junior High, but she was denied entry because of her race.[/bg_collapse]
4. The organization that grew out of the D.C. fight against segregated schools (based on both race and socioeconomics was named? Education Warriors, Parents Against Segregation, United Schools, or Consolidated Parents Group.
[bg_collapse view=”link” color=”#4a4949″ expand_text=”Answer” collapse_text=”- Collapse” ]Consolidated Parents Group. By February 1948, the original alliance of parents had re-organized under the leadership of its original chairman, Gardner L. Bishop, who was also the Brown Junior High P.T.A. President. The organization renamed itself the Consolidated Parent Group, Inc. Among some of the controversial issues at question were the perfunctory validity of the District of Columbia’s Board of Education, which had been found to act selectively in favor of white schools. Throughout their struggle, the parent group demanded the unconditional resignation of the Board’s Chairman, Hobart M. Corning. From the issue of over-crowding in Negro Schools-compared to unused space in white ones, grew the idea of desegregation of schools, with this latter point later becoming the pivot on which the organization operated. Between the years 1947 and 1949 the Consolidated Parent Group, Inc., brought before the courts four cases with complaints of discrimination in the Washington, D.C. school system. None of these cases received a ruling and all of them were subsequently dropped from the courts. With the death of their lawyer, Charles H. Houston in 1949, the Consolidated Parent Group became less vocal and less public.[/bg_collapse]
5. A 1795 law made it illegal for more than this number Blacks to congregate at one time. 3, 5, 6, or 8?
[bg_collapse view=”link” color=”#4a4949″ expand_text=”Answer” collapse_text=”- Collapse” ]8. These were part of the city’s Black Codes, which restricted Black people’s right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease property, and move freely through public spaces. A central element of the Black Codes were vagrancy laws that criminalized men and women who were out of work.[/bg_collapse]
6. In what year did an Act of Congress ban slave trading in Washington, D.C. (then known as Washington City) — 1940, 1850, 1852, 1860?
[bg_collapse view=”link” color=”#4a4949″ expand_text=”Answer” collapse_text=”- Collapse” ]1850. While slave-trading was officially disbanded, the institution of slavery continued until April 16, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. Passage of this law came 8 1/2 months before President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation and provided for immediate emancipation, compensation to former owners who were loyal to the Union of up to $300 for each freed slave, voluntary colonization of former slaves to locations outside the United States, and payments of up to $100 for each person choosing emigration.[/bg_collapse]
7. What neighborhood is renowned as a significant post-Civil War settlement of free Blacks and freed slaves established by the Freedmen’s Bureau? Naylor Gardens, Barry Farm, Shaw, or LeDroit Park?
[bg_collapse view=”link” color=”#4a4949″ expand_text=”Answer” collapse_text=”- Collapse” ]Barry Farm. The neighborhood was originally part of James Barry’s farm, which extended from the Anacostia River to what is now known as Garfield Heights. In 1867, General Oliver Howard, Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, used federal funds to buy the 375-acre site and sold lots for $215 – $300 per acre to families of freed slaves and refugees from the Civil War, creating the first African-American homeownership community in the District. After working all day, the families would cross the Anacostia River and work by the light of bonfires to build their homes. Over the years, the community has been known as Barry’s Farm, Potomac City, Howardstown, and Hillsdale. Many of the streets in the neighborhood commemorate figures with central roles in abolitionism and the advancement of African-Americans in the Civil War era, including General Howard, Frederick Douglass, James Birney, Senator Charles Sumner, Representative Thaddeus Stevens, Edwin Stanton, and General Philip Sheridan.[/bg_collapse]
8. What D.C. activist worked with organizations including the National Alliance against Racial and Political Violence, the National Black Environmental Justice Network, and Black Voices for Peace for which he was the founder and co-chair. He passed away in 2006 from cancer after being exposed to toxins while fighting against environmental racism in New Orleans? Morgan Snyder, John Johnson, Damu Smith, Carlton Spivey.
[bg_collapse view=”link” color=”#4a4949″ expand_text=”Answer” collapse_text=”- Collapse” ]Damu Smith. Though Smith was technically born in St. Louis, he has always been considered a “D.C. homeboy,” and true champion of the underdog. “I know what it is to go to school without heat at home and study by candlelight and not have enough money to get adequate clothes… I grew up under food stamps and welfare and government handout cheese and milk and meat and all that… So, I have great sensitivity to the plight of poor people,” Smith told one reporter. Smith was known for taking “Toxic Tours” as a member of Greenpeace in Louisiana’s infamous Cancer Alley, where he documented the disproportionate exposure Blacks and Latinx faced to pollutants.[/bg_collapse]