Senator Edward Brooke
Born in 1919, Edward William Brooke III was a native Washingtonian and Howard University graduate. He earned a bronze star in the U.S. Army where he served for five years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After Army service, he enrolled and graduated from Boston University School of Law. Brooke later went on to serve as the first Black Attorney General of Massachusetts and in 1967 was elected the first Black U.S. Senator since Reconstruction.
He ultimately served two terms representing the state of Massachusetts. Senator Brooke was a leading advocate for affordable housing who fought diligently against housing discrimination. He co-authored the 1968 Fair Housing Act, among the most important pieces of civil rights legislation which prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and disability. Senator Brooke lived at 1938 3rd Street, NW. Senator Edward Brooke embodies the most powerful form of activism which is legislative activism – the most direct path to achieving equality for all humans.
Hilda Wilkerson Brown
Hilda Wilkerson Brown was a native Washingtonian and an esteemed educator and artist. She completed her Bachelors in Education at Howard University, her Masters in the Arts from Columbia University and also studied at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design in New York. Brown served on the faculty at Miner Teachers College, the primary educational institution for black educators trained in Washington D.C., where she coordinated a two-year art history, design and fine arts curriculum before eventually chairing the art department.
Brown also lectured at Howard University and other schools throughout Washington D.C. on African art heritage, art in interior design and art education for elementary school teachers. She was an early champion of modern art pedagogy which encouraged individual creativity as opposed to mimicry. Brown was also an accomplished painter, printmaker and ceramicist who lived at 237 Rhode Island Avenue, NW. Hilda Wilkerson Brown embodies The Guest House’s core value of artistic expression which is thoughtfully integrated into our guest experience and we believe, is foundational to the human experience.
Ralph Bunche
Born in Detroit Michigan in 1904, Ralph Bunche was an intellectual powerhouse who graduated valedictorian of his high school and later graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1927 summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, also as valedictorian. Bunche went on to earn both his Masters and PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, where he was the first African American doctoral recipient in the department. For more than two decades, Bunche served as the Chair of the Department of Political Science at Howard University.
Bunche was a skilled policy expert and served as senior advisor to the U.S. delegation for the Charter Conference of the United Nations in 1945 when the international body was formed. During his 25 years of service to the United Nations, he was instrumental in dismantling old colonialism systems in African and Asia and guided scores of emerging nations through the transition to independence in the post-war era. In 1948 Bunche served as the United Nations’ chief mediator working to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1950, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomacy work, becoming the first African American Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. In 1963, John F. Kennedy awarded Ralph Bunche the Presidential Medal of Freedom. By the late 1960’s, Bunche was an active and vocal supporter of the Civil Rights Movement participating in the 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama. Scholars recognize Ralph Bunche was arguably the most influential African American in the first half of the 20th century. The consummate diplomat and peacemaker, Ralph Bunch embodies the role that African Americans have played as healers, bridge builders and cultural ambassadors.
Anna J Cooper
Anna J. Cooper was born enslaved in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1858. Working as a nursemaid to the household of a prominent attorney, Anna J. Cooper was exposed to books and education which quickly sparked her passion for education as a tool for Black advancement. Displaying an impressive acumen for learning, Cooper received a scholarship to St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute, which provided K-12 along with trade education where she excelled in a broad liberal arts education including math and science, history and English literature, as well as French and the classical languages. It was here where Cooper first discovered her feminist voice having to fight for the opportunity to take classes reserved for men.
Cooper went on to Oberlin college, where she continued to challenge gender-based curricular norms and ultimately shattered the glass ceiling in 1888 when she earned a Master’s degree in Mathematics, making her a storied part of the first class of Black women to earn a master’s degree. In 1892, along with Ida B. Wells and her Oberlin classmate Mary Church Terrell, Cooper founded the Colored Women’s League, a club which promoted unity, social progress and the best interests of the African American community. In the same year, Cooper published, A Voice from the South, and made the case for the educational, moral and spiritual upliftment of black women as a means to effectively improve the general standing of the African American community, earning her the title, the Mother of Black Feminism. In 1901, Cooper went on to lead the prestigious M. Street High school for African Americans and became a staunch advocate for a liberal arts education as a means of preparing black students for higher education and leadership as opposed to more vocational training paths. In 1924 at the age of 66, Anna J. Cooper earned her PhD in History from the University of Paris – Sorbonne, after transferring from Columbia University, making her the fourth black woman in U.S. history to earn a PhD.
After retiring briefly from the M. Street School in 1930, Cooper quickly left retirement and spent the next ten years as President of Frelinghuysen University – an institution providing continuing education to working African Americans at hours that did not conflict with their employment. When the school experienced a fiscal crisis causing it to lose its downtown location, Anna J. Cooper housed the school in her home at 201 T Street. An accomplished international orator and author until shortly before her passing at the age of 106, Cooper’s writings on race and racism, gender and the socioeconomic realities of black families, earned her a reputation as an esteemed sociologist who traveled the world delivering talks and papers. Anna J. Cooper embodies the pivotal awakening that true mobilization of the African American community to achieve economic and social equality is predicated on engagement and leadership from Black women.
General Benjamin O. Davis Sr.
Originally from Washington, D.C., General Benjamin Davis Sr. attended the prestigious M. Street School for African Americans. Against his parent’s urging, he decided to forgo college and instead acted on a higher calling to military service. Upon graduating high school, in response to the Spanish-American war, Davis joined the 8th U.S. Volunteer Infantry, an all-black unit in the U.S. Army. In 1899, he enlisted as a Private in Troop I of the 9th Cavalry Regiment, one of the original Buffalo Soldier regiments. The unit was commanded by Lieutenant Charles Young, a West Point graduate who was the only African American officer serving in the U.S. military at the time. Under the mentorship of Lieutenant Young, Davis went on to pass the officer candidate test in 1901. In the same year, Davis was commissioned a Second Lieutenant and posted overseas to serve in the Philippine-American War. Rising slowly through the ranks, in 1930, David became the first black colonel in the Army.
Throughout his career, Davis received a number of special assignments including serving as a military attache, a military expert, supporting diplomatic missions in Liberia, as a Professor of Military Science and Tactics at Wilberforce University and the Tuskegee Institute, and as an instructor with the National Guard. Although Davis’s opportunities were limited due to the military’s strict segregationist policies, his leadership and brilliance were finally recognized in 1940 when he was promoted to Brigadier General by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, becoming the first black General Officer in the U.S. Army. During World War II, he headed a special unit charged with safeguarding the status and morale of black soldiers in the Army. He was later assigned to Washington D.C as an assistant in the Office of the Inspector General where he served on an Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies.
During a subsequent assignment at the Office of the Inspector General in Europe, Davis was instrumental in the proposed policy of integration using replacement units – an important step in the fight for full integration. Throughout his career, David was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal and a Bronze Star Medal. In 1948, after fifty years of military service, Davis retired in a public ceremony with President Harry S. Truman presiding. Six days later, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981 which abolished racial discrimination in the United States armed forces. General Benjamin Davis embodies the commitment, loyalty and patriotism of African American service men and women who have fought for generations to preserve and advance America’s perfect ideals. In his spirit, The Guest House also acknowledges the unsung patriotism of the activists and agitators who reject the status quo and continue to push America toward action more in keeping with her values.
Ernest Just
Ernest Everett Just was born in 1883. When he was four years old, his mother became a widower and worked as an instructor at an African-American school in Charleston to support Just and his two younger siblings. At the age of 13, Just enrolled at the Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanical College in South Carolina, before moving to New Hampshire three years later to attend a college-preparatory high school, Kimball Union Academy, where he graduated in 1903 with the highest grades in his class. Just went on to matriculate at Dartmouth College where he won honors in zoology, botany, sociology, and history and ultimately graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
In 1907, Just joined the faculty at Howard University and went on to lead the newly formed biology and zoology departments. In the summer of 1909, Just spent the summer as a research assistant at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole Massachusetts where he studied the eggs, fertilization and breeding habits of marine invertebrates. Just would spend the next 20 summers at the MBL where he developed a reputation as an international-respected scientist. Just eventually began his graduate training with coursework at the MBL which launched him into a PhD program. In 1916, Just received his doctorate in zoology with a thesis on the mechanics of fertilization at the University of Chicago. He was widely regarded as an accomplished and gifted experimentalist with an expertise in cell biology. Having been closed out of research appointments at major American universities due to his race, Just advanced his research at prestigious research institutions in Italy, Paris and Germany including Anton Dohrn in Naples and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin.
Throughout his career, he authored two books, Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Animals, and The Biology of the Cell Surface, and published at least 70 papers. His contributions were foundational to our modern-day understanding of evolutionary and developmental cell biology. It was not until decades after his untimely death in 1941 when Just was properly recognized for his ground-breaking contributions with prizes and international symposia that were established in his name. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Just on his list of the 100 Greatest African Americans. Earnest Just’s memory evokes the often-overlooked legacy of scientific achievements that people of African descent have made since ancient civilization in the areas of mathematics, astronomy, architecture, engineering, navigation and medicine.
E. Franklin Frazier
Edward Franklin Frazier was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1894 as one of five children of James H. Frazier, a bank messenger and Mary Clark Frazier, a homemaker. Upon his graduation from Colored High School in 1912, he was awarded the schools’ annual scholarship to Howard University. Frazier graduated from Howard in 1916 where he was a top scholar studying Latin, Greek, German and mathematics and an active student leader serving as two-time class president and member of the NAACP. After graduating from Howard, Frazier attended Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts where he studied sociology and earned a master’s degree in 1920. His thesis: New Currents of Thought Among the Colored People of America, represented the beginning of Frazier’s deep interest and thought-leadership on the topic of African-American history and culture.
In 1920, Frazier took a fellowship as a Russell Sage Foundation at the New York School of Social Work. He then joined Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia where he established what is now known as the Atlanta University School of Social Work. There he wrote an article title “The Pathology of Race Prejudice” where he explored the moral duality demonstrated by the capacity of otherwise kind and law-abiding white Americans to show revolting levels of cruelty toward black people. After facing strong criticism and even physical threats against his life, Frazier accepted a fellowship from the University of Chicago’s sociology department where his studies culminated in his earning a Ph.D. in 1931. After a five-year stint at Fisk University, Frazier returned to Howard University where he spent the balance of his career.
While at Howard, Frazier founded and led the D.C. chapter of the American Sociological Association and was ultimately elected as the national organization’s first black president in 1948 and received the Association’s MacIver award for his contributions in the field of sociology. Throughout his prolific career, Frazier published eight books, 89 articles and 18 chapters in books edited by others. In his seminal work, a Black Bourgeoisie, released in 1957, Frazier presented a critical evaluation of the upwardly mobile black middle class as a group whose identity shaped by respectability politics, conspicuous consumption and proximity to whiteness embraced a fundamental departure from black roots and was reflective of a collective, debilitating inferiority complex.
Frazier’s controversial insights shook the consciousness of black America and served as a prophetic precursor to the Black Liberation Movement which gained momentum a decade later in the late 60’s and 1970’s where racial self-determination, ancestral pride and centering the black perspective took hold as ideas critical to achieving true equality. In E. Franklin Frazier’s legacy, we celebrate the expression of unpopular, yet independent thinking which represents the lonely and perilous leadership required to move society forward.
Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee to freed enslaved people of mixed-race ancestry. At the age of 8, Terrell was sent to Yellow Spring, Ohio to attend Antioch College Model School for four years before moving to Oberlin, Ohio to attend high school. When Terrell graduated high school in 1879, she began her college career at Oberlin College, the first college in the United States to accept African American and female students. At Oberlin, Terrell opted to take the four-year “gentleman’s course” instead of the two-year course typically reserved for women. She received her Bachelor's degree in Classics in 1884 and her Master’s degree in Education 1888, making her the first black woman in the United States (along with Anna J. Cooper) to earn a four year college degree and a master’s degree.
Terrell began her career as a teacher, first at Wiberforce University and then later as M Street School in Washington D.C. She took a leave of absence from teaching to travel and study in Europe for a few years where she became fluent in French, German and Italian. Upon returning to the U.S., Terrell shifted her focus from education to activism where she distinguished herself as a skilled organizer. In 1892, Terrell formed the Colored Women’s League with a goal of promoting unity, social progress and the best interests of the African American community.
The Colored Women’s League launched a training and kindergarten program, which ended up being so successful that it led to the appointment of Terrell to the District of Columbia Board of Education, becoming the first black woman in the United States to be appointed to a school board. In order to expand their reach and capacity, the Colored Women’s League joined forces with the Federation of Afro-American women to form the National Association of Colored Women whose motto was “Lifting as We Climb”. Terrell served as the group’s inaugural president, serving two terms. She became active in the suffragist movement and leveraged her access as one of a few black women allowed to attend meetings of the National American Women Suffrage Association, led by Susan B. Anthony, to urge unity and also call attention to the “double burden” that African-American women faced.
Terrell helped found Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated and worked successfully to integrate the American Association of University Women. Her activism was amplified by her prolific writing to promote the African-American Women’s Club movement. Her articles were broadly picked up by newspapers in major cities from Chicago, to Baltimore, to New York. In 1909, Terrell was one of two black women who were signatories to “the call” at the inaugural organizational meeting of the NAACP, making her a founding member. In Mary Church Terrell’s legacy, we celebrate the collective power of communities as a means to achieve lasting change.