Civil War, there was a temporary flowering of desegregation in Washington as public transportation, among other things, was integrated. But bitter opposition remained.

In one case, a District streetcar conductor tried to drag the renowned abolitionist Sojourner Truth off his car. She hung on but injured her shoulder, according to Douglas R Egerton’s book The Wars of Reconstruction. Truth sued, and the conductor was fired. But as the progressive era of Reconstruction ended, the city and the country began a long descent into a period of discrimination and resegregation that would last more than a century.

In Washington, decent jobs grew more and more scarce. In 1908, the State Department had no black employee above the grade of messenger, according to Green. Of the fire department’s 498 firefighters, nine werefighting waned.

The 1920s brought no solutions and no respite. In 1925, Washington welcomed the Klan. Thirty thousand robed Klan members strode up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol, then down to the Washington Monument. Businesses said they were disappointed because they had not ordered enough merchandise to serve so large a crowd.

The air was filled with smoke and the smell of tear gas, and the streets were littered with broken glass (Getty)

The Depression brought more misery The government set up an “Alley Dwelling Authority” to rid the city of the most squalid homes, almost exclusively occupied by African-Americans.

In 1937, 9,000 District houses were illuminated only by oil lamps, 11,000 families lacked indoor toilets, and 7,000 tenements didn’t have indoor water taps, according to Green’s history. Schools, theatres and the