a president had signed an official order protecting the rights of African-Americans.

Upheaval in ‘the village’

The metal trash can was sitting outside a Peoples Drug store in northwest Washington. It was made of corrugated metal, with handles on the sides, and as Stanley Mayes watched, a man picked it up and hurled it through the store’s glass window.

The date was 4 April 1968. Word was on the street that Martin Luther King Jr had just been assassinated. And Mayes, 18, was witnessing the opening scenes of unrest that would torment the city for the next 72 hours and leave sections of the capital in ruins for 30 years. “It made no sense to me,” he recalled. He and his parents lived around the corner on Wallach Place, and he2 April, outside the Peoples Drug, a tense standoff between police and bystanders developed over a fight between local youths and store security guards. Objects were thrown at the store and at police cars. The police arrested two men, but left the area quickly, and the tension eased.

Two nights later, at the same intersection, the outcome would be different.

Epilogue

After the 1910 court case declared Isabel Wall black, her family left Brookland and eventually settled in Georgetown. The family had changed its name to Gates. And Isabel attended the local white school.

Stanley Mayes eventually left Wallach Place to attend Rutgers Law School and have a career in law, banking and investment. In the early 1980s, he bought a house on Wallach Place across the street from his parents. He