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Holly McDonald

Holly McDonald graduated from Lawrence University in June 2021 with a BA in History and Spanish. Although she hails from Phoenix, AZ, Holly has always been intrigued by lesser-known historical events, people, and places, and as it turns out, the DMV area is full of all those things. In addition to learning about history, Holly enjoys pulling on plastic at her local bouldering gym, making music, and reading anything she can get her hands on.

Posts by this Author

DC
John Collier's Conference at the Cosmos Club

John Collier's Conference at the Cosmos Club

12/20/2021 in DC by Holly McDonald

By 1934, BIA Commissioner John Collier believed that land allotment and other policies meant to help Native Americans were doing more harm than good, and he wanted to reverse them through an ambitious bill known as the Indian Reorganization Act (also called the Wheeler-Howard Act). Collier’s bill would not only nullify the land allotment policy, but it would also allow Native American tribes to govern themselves, decentralize the BIA, consolidate Native land, and transfer Indigenous children from boarding schools to day schools.

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DC
"Giving People the Courage to Be Themselves": Gay Pride Day in D.C.

"Giving People the Courage to Be Themselves": Gay Pride Day in D.C.

12/17/2021 in DC by Holly McDonald

Gay rights activist Larry “Deacon” Maccubbin was at a party with friends in 1975 when the topic of New York Pride eventually came up. As they were discussing who would be going, one of his friends asked why their own city, Washington, D.C., didn’t have a similar event ─ it was the nation’s capital, after all. The idea stuck in Maccubin’s head.

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DC
The Show Must Go On: Shirley Horn at the Howard Theatre

The Show Must Go On: Shirley Horn at the Howard Theatre

12/10/2021 in DC by Holly McDonald

By the late 1950s, Shirley Horn had performed all up and down the U Street corridor a countless number of times, but her show at the Howard Theatre one October night in 1958 was particularly memorable for her. The jazz pianist and singer happened to be in the ninth month of her pregnancy at the time and was expecting the baby to be due any day.

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DC

How Chinatown's Friendship Archway Came To Be

12/03/2021 in DC by Holly McDonald

In addition to tours of the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs, former D.C. mayor Marion Barry’s trip to China in May 1984 involved talks with Beijing mayor Chen Xitong about constructing a symbol of the friendship between the two capital cities in the form of an archway in D.C.’s Chinatown.

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DC
Respect, Unity, and Brotherhood at the Million Man March

Respect, Unity, and Brotherhood at the Million Man March

11/27/2021 in DC by Holly McDonald

If you visited any major U.S. city in the early fall of 1995, there’s no doubt you would have heard of the Million Man March for Black men in Washington, D.C., on October 16, either from flyers posted around town or through word of mouth. After all, plans for a massive gathering of African American men on the National Mall had been in motion for over a year.

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DC
Remembering the American Indian Movement's Occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Remembering the American Indian Movement's Occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

10/29/2021 in DC by Holly McDonald

“If we go, we’re going to take this building with us...There’s going to be a helluva smoke signal.” That’s what Russell Means, an Oglala Dakota, told Evening Star reporters a few days after he and a group of several hundred other Native Americans broke into the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in Washington, D.C. and refused to leave. 

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DC
Man Missing: Scarlet Crow's Fateful Visit to Washington, D.C.

Man Missing: Scarlet Crow's Fateful Visit to Washington, D.C.

10/14/2021 in DC by Holly McDonald

On the night of February 24, 1867 in the nation’s capital, Scarlet Crow, a visiting Sioux chief, mysteriously disappeared. No one knows for sure what happened. Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate oral history proposed that he was kidnapped, while the Evening Star newspaper put forth that he had simply wandered and gotten lost. What is indisputable, however, is that after that night, Scarlet Crow was never seen alive again. 

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