As is often the case, portions of this edition of The Collins D.C. Council Report were completed in the Maurice Williams Memorial Press Room, located on the fifth floor of the John A. Wilson Building.
For those who don’t know, Maurice Williams was a WHUR reporter who lost his life during the 1977 Hanafi Siege on the Wilson Building, then known as the District Building. This particular council report, written in commemoration of the Black History Month centennial, is written in honor of Williams, whose picture this reporter sits across from while filing copy in the press room.
At a time when people in power apply pressure, overt and covert, on Black journalists, it’s incumbent upon the masses of Black people, and other groups for that matter, to ras-pect the Black Press as the vanguard of accountability journalism. Long before the “mainstream” press siphoned our best and brightest reporters, those reporters advanced causes related to abolition, civil rights and more — all from these community-supported, family-owned institutions.
More of that for the week of March 16, when the nation celebrates 199 years of the Black Press. For now, I invite readers to immerse themselves in contemporary Black History matters taken on by the D.C. Council during its Feb. 3 legislative meeting. History is indeed cyclical.
The Council Honors Donna Lorraine Wright-Miller, Community Servant and Lover of Family
The D.C. Council unanimously approved a ceremonial resolution in honor of the late Donna Lorraine Wright-Miller, a longtime social worker and holistic healer who spent much of her life in service of youth, elders, and members of her Petworth community.
Upon learning about the council resolution on Monday morning, Kevin Orlando Miller, Wright-Miller’s widow, pledged to tune into the Feb. 3 Committee of the Whole and legislative meetings. He told The Informer that the council, and D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) in particular, honored his wife in the right way.
“They saw that Donna was diligent [and] she cared for the people,” said Miller, Wright-Miller’s husband of 10 years. “I can’t say too much more than that.”
Wright-Miller died on Nov. 19, 2025 at the age of 61. Her legacy is rooted in her role as a social worker at D.C. Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) and MBI Health Services, LLC. Wright-Miller, an alumna of McKinley Technology High School, New Sewell Music Conservatory, and Howard University, garnered a reputation as a host of lively community functions and stalwart of healthy living, as evidenced through her vegan diet and insistence on breath work.
On Dec. 13, family, friends, and community members honored Wright-Miller during a standing-room homegoing at Asbury United Methodist Church, one of two houses of worship that she attended. Forty days later, an ascension ceremony at Everlasting Life Cafe in Capitol Heights, Maryland allowed time for vegan treats, breathing exercises, and hours of dancing that Ras Ziah Ayubu DjzeeLion facilitated on the ones and twos.
During the Jan. 3 ceremony, Miller, a go-go saxophonist and son of the late Pan-African organizer Hasinatu Camara, sat in the front of the packed venue. Weeks later, while reflecting on Wright-Miller’s legacy, her husband said his late wife will always be remembered for pursuing a higher purpose.
“You can’t be after the money and then care for the people unless you’re giving the people the money,” Miller told The Informer about her 2015 transition from CFSA. “She could’ve stayed at her good D.C. government job, but there were crazy things that didn’t seem in favor of the people. That’s how Donna was raised. That’s why she was around Afrocentric people”
Wright-Miller, a first-generation Petworth resident, was the daughter of Sarah Wright and the late Earl Wright, Jr. With the help of then-Ward 4 D.C. Councilmember Brandon Todd, she secured a ceremonial naming of the 3800 block of 10th Street NW in her father’s name.
Wright, who died in 2017, spent more than 50 years as a contractor and gardener who helped the underprivileged and educated the youth. For more than a decade, he hosted a fish fry on his block for substance users and the homeless. He conducted these activities while organizing community meetings and taking the lead on the upkeep of his block and other blocks along 10th Street NW.
Lewis George, who connected with Wright-Miller during the Spring 2021 event celebrating the ceremonial street renaming, told The Informer that she and the late social worker bonded over their love for their late fathers.
“She really wanted her, her dad and family’s legacy reflected there because they had done so much in the neighborhood,” Lewis George said, “bringing in new families, welcoming new families, and teaching those families about the history of the neighborhood, of the block, of the community.”
Lewis George, chair of the D.C. Council’s Committee on Facilities, said Wright-Miller’s passion for children inspired much of the oversight she’s conducted over CFSA.
“The only thing she said was, ‘You got to make sure they are treating families right, that they’re doing right by children,’” Lewis George recounted about Wright-Miller. “She made me actually excited about having the agency. There’s good work to be done there.”
Lewis George evoked the Kwanzaa principle of Ujima as she told The Informer how Wright-Miller brought elements of her personality and ethos into her job.
“She felt deeply this idea that…we are all an extension of each other’s family and we all have a collective responsibility to care for each other,” the Ward 4 council member said. “That was just one of the things that are reflective of what made her so effective at being a social worker, because there was a deep love, a deep sense of responsibility for community and family and wanting our community to be whole.”
As Black America commemorates the 100th anniversary of what’s now known as Black History Month, Lewis George said that it’s incumbent upon, not only the government, but District families to follow in Wright-Miller’s footsteps by documenting their history.
“If we don’t memorialize it, it can be erased and ignored and dissipated,” Lewis George said. “Remember that Carter G. Woodson went to the White House, came back and said, ‘We got to preserve our history. We got to tell our stories. We have to collect this information,’ and you think about it, a lot of families don’t collect information.”
A Ward 6 Community Inches Closer to Immortalizing Gardner Bishop
On its first reading, the D.C. Council unanimously approved the Gardner Bishop Elementary School Redesignation Act of 2025, which would rename a school in honor of Gardner Bishop, a local father and civil rights hero.
If this legislation passes on second reading, the elementary school currently undergoing modernization on North Carolina Avenue SE, would no longer be named for Robert Brent, a 19th century District mayor under whom the city’s “Black Codes” came into existence.
For D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), such a change would further cement Bishop’s legacy.
“Having your school named after [ Bishop]…creates a culture in the school, helps create an opportunity to help teach about that and I hope those are values that get instilled,” said Allen, who introduced the legislation. “It’s what I’m seeing happen at [Shirley] Chisholm [Elementary School] where Shirley Chisholm is being held up and those values [are] being taught.”
In 1947, Bishop and other members of the Consolidated Parents Group led a two-month boycott of what were then Browne Junior High School, Blow Elementary School, and Webb Elementary School. This was in response to the overcrowding of Browne Junior High, a dilemma that compelled the D.C. Board of Education to split the Black student population between that school and Blow and Webb, two substandard campuses that white families abandoned.
Two years later, in 1949, Bishop agitated for the integration of John Philip Sousa Junior High School. The lawsuit, Bolling v. Sharpe introduced the unconstitutionality of school segregation as a legal concept while serving as one of four companion cases for Brown v. Board of Education.
Allen said Bishop acted out of necessity.
“He was a dad who just wanted better…when he realized what his own kids were being shut out and left out of schools,” Allen told The Informer. “He is a figure that rightly should be held up and remembered because he saw a problem and wanted to do something about it and he figured out how to use the courts [and] the different instrumentalities of government to make this change.”
Brent Elementary, which is currently undergoing modernization, is scheduled to reopen by the 2027-2028 school year. During the 2023-2024 school year, community members embarked on a school renaming process— similar to what took place at what’s now known as Shirley Chisholm Elementary School and Jackson-Reed High School.
A school survey circulated during the earlier part of 2025 led to the submission of 57 names to be considered for the renaming of Brent Elementary. After much debate, the list narrowed down to Bishop and Elizabeth Catlett, a 20th century Mexican-American sculptor known for her depictions of the African-American experience.
As noted in the fall 2025 resolution that Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6B unanimously approved, more than half of the 700 students, caregivers, and alumni who took part in the process ultimately voted in favor of Bishop.
In his Jan. 13 testimony before the council’s Committee of the Whole, Brent Elementary student Billy Schutte-Pratt explained what the renaming would mean to him and his classmates.
“When parents and other people in the community think of our school, they won’t think of a racist white guy,” said Billy, one of six public witnesses. “They’ll think of a parent who saw a problem, and instead of accepting it, thinking there was nothing to be done, he took action. He helped others. The overall outcome of his actions is knowing that he needed to do something….to help with education, which everybody, no matter what race, identity, gender, or adversity, deserves to have.”
A Question of Equity in the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board Nomination Process
The D.C. Council unanimously approved the nominations of Timothy Thomas, Lauren McHale, and Chris Morrison to the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB). This trio now joins an entity that, under the purview of D.C. Office of Planning, advises the mayor on historic preservation matters while implementing programming specific to that mission.
In the weeks leading to this milestone, one local advocate expressed concern about geographic diversity on the board and how the lack thereof could hinder equitable preservation of District landmarks and communities.
“Once approved by the council, there will be no board members from Wards 1, 4, 7, or 8,” said Rebecca Miller, executive director of DC Preservation League (DCPL), in her Dec. 22, 2025 testimony before the D.C. Council’s Committee of the Whole. “There are, however, three board members from Ward 3, which could exacerbate concerns that historic preservation is exclusionary and exclusive to higher-income areas of the city.”
Miller and her colleagues often testify before HPRB on matters concerning major development projects and landmark nominations. In December, while speaking to D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D), Miller mentioned the Historic Landmark and Historic District Protection Act of 1978 as a guide in ensuring that the HPRB consists of people who understand and can apply historic preservation regulations.
Before the council’s Feb. 3 legislative meeting, the nine-member HPRB had four vacancies.
Now, Thomas, a boxing and wrestling commissioner who lives in Ward 5, will serve out the rest of Linda Greene’s three-year term as the citizen member. McHale, a Ward 6 resident and president of the L’Enfant Trust, will serve as the board’s architectural historian member, while Morrison, managing principal at Perkins&Will, will serve as an architect member.
With one more citizen vacancy left to fill, Miller expressed her desire for a process that leads to the nomination of a member from an underrepresented District jurisdiction.
“Geographic diversity is vital for communities to feel that their views are considered in decisions about their neighborhoods,” Miller told Mendelson in her Dec. 22 testimony. “DCPL would encourage the mayor to nominate a candidate for the remaining vacancy from one of these wards to ensure the broadest representation across the city.”
On Monday, Mendelson weighed in on the notion that HPRB needs more east-of-the-river representation.
“I don’t think it’s a disadvantage to historic preservation in those wards that are not represented,” Mendelson told The Informer. “On the other hand, I agree with the [D.C.] Preservation League that we would like to see geographic diversity. There needs to be more effort on the part of the executive to accomplish that.”
Mendelson said District Mayor Muriel Bowser has been slow to move the dial on that priority.
“ The point has been made over and over,” he said. “I don’t know why the executive has had a tough ear to that.”
The Informer unsuccessfully attempted to gather information from the Executive Office of the Mayor (EOM) and the Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments about the total number of applicants for HPRB’s architect, architectural historian, and citizen roles.
A FOIA request has since been submitted.
Per EOM, HPRB consists of professionals and citizen members who demonstrate “competence, interest or knowledge” in historic preservation. The professionals on the board, an EOM spokesperson said, meet national qualification standards in: history, prehistoric and historic archaeology, architectural history, and architecture.
On Monday, Bowser reflected on the issue of geographic diversity, and how she shapes the composition of the District’s governing bodies.
“Our general approach is to make sure that our 1,700-plus boards and commissions have diversity of all kinds,” Bowser told The Informer. “Geographic diversity is very important to us.”
Recent HPRB meetings have focused on: Francis Junior High School in Northwest; Metropolitan AME Church in Northwest; U Street Historic District; and Woodley Park Historic District, among several other landmarks. The board’s Jan. 22 meeting focused on Alexander Crummell School and the historic districts of: Mount Vernon Square in Northwest; Capitol Hill; Woodley Park; and Mount Pleasant.
Mendelson, in speaking about the three new HPRB members, said equity wouldn’t be an issue.
“I expect that [Timothy Thomas] will be sensitive to community issues around the city, not just in his neighborhood,” Mendelson said. “With regard to the architectural historian [Lauren McHale], I’ve worked with her, [and] I got to know her through work that she’s doing in Historic Anacostia. Excellent reputation, cares very much about historic preservation, but also recognizes that it has to be compatible with development.”