1920s

In the 1920s, a group of D.C. women formed the Anti-Flirt Club to put a stop to the increasingly annoying, and at times dangerous, problem of men harassing women from motor vehicles and street corners. 

Beneath the Lincoln Memorial's gleaming marble columns lies a vast hidden basement — complete with century-old worker graffiti, naturally formed stalactites, and a tiny ecosystem that thrived undisturbed in the dark for decades.

In the 1920s, entrepreneur Hattie Sewell looked to put her extensive experience in the hospitality industry to work turning around the Peirce Mill Teahouse in Rock Creek Park. But as a Black businesswoman in the 1920s, Sewell faced harsh blow back, even as her business thrived.

By the time she set out to build monuments, Daisy Breaux was a woman accustomed to getting what she wanted. Unfortunately, her plans for a memorial to America's mothers never got off the ground. In a legal snarl, she accused the architect of blackmail and extortion. He charged her in turn with sabotaging the project from the start.

Half a century after the Civil War, Southerners were trying to change what the country remembered about the rebellion, including the realities of slavery. One way that they did this was by putting up monuments all over the United States glorifying Confederate heroes and "faithful slaves." While dozens of memorials and statues were erected, one in Washington, D.C. fortunately never came to fruition.

In May of 1929, the beloved mascot of Hyattsville High School, Billy the possum, disappears. With post season championships fast approaching and no mascot to lead their teams to victory, a contingent of Maryland students head for Washington to make a very special presidential petition.

Warren G. Harding, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone were some of the biggest names of the early 1920s. You'd expect these men to meet at some point, but when they finally did, it was in an unexpected place: in the remote hills of western Maryland! Read about the President's camping trip in the summer of 1921.

Many international dignitaries were invited to attend the unknown soldier burial on Armistice Day in 1921, honoring those who had died in anonymity during World War I. However, the invitation of one of these guests, Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow tribe, carried a greater significance. His attendance represented the Native American contribution to the Great War as well as the contentious relationship between Native Americans and the United States government at the turn of the twentieth century. 

The Tivoli Theater's grand opening in 1924 was heralded by a grand parade and a carnival which attracted hundreds of Washingtonian's to the Golden Age movie theater. Yet, just over 50 years later, the Tivoli had its windows bolted up and doors closed, no longer the shining light in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. What followed afterwards was a dramatic decades-long fight over the fate of the Tivoli, bringing up questions surrounding urban renewal and the future of the neighborhood, which had suffered greatly after the 1968 riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Returning to campus for the new school year in 1937, Howard University’s students received grim news: one of their deans, Lucy Diggs Slowe, was “reputed critically ill with pleurisy. Her condition was such on Tuesday that relatives were called to her bedside.” After 15 years at the university, Slowe was a staple to the campus and its students – many of the women enrolled at the college saw her has a mentor and advocate for their education at Howard. 

What the headline didn’t mention was what some believed was the cause of her declining health. There were rumblings that it was the efforts of key Howard University staff that had caused her illness, and they wouldn’t stop until Slowe left the school for good. 

Who was Lucy Diggs Slowe, and what led to such harsh conflict between her and the university?