D.C.+Side+Trips



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Jerome Pohlen's **// Progressive Nation: A Travel Guide with 400+ Left Turns and Inspiring Landmarks //** is the source for this list of places to visit during your free time in Washington, DC if you are attending ALA's 2010 Annual Conference. Pohlen's guide endeavors to celebrate those who worked for progressive social change, as well as the movements and communities they inspired. The listings here are, with one exception, within 30 minutes via foot and/or public transportation of the Washington Convention Center. Use the Washington Transit Authority's Trip Planner to plan your route!

Alice Paul, the National Women's Party, and the Equal Rights Amendment
**NWP Headquarters, Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, 144 Constitution Avenue NE, Washington DC, (202) 546-1210 ** , http://www.sewallbelmont.org

Alice Paul received her political education while attending the London School of Economics. Women in Great Britain were demanding the vote, and she joined them; Paul was arrested seven times during the demonstrations, was jailed three times, and was force fed during a hunger strike. On returning to the states in 1909 she vowed to fight for the franchise in her home country. On May 3, 1913, working on behalf of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), Paul organized the Suffrage Procession and Pageant in Washington, DC. On the eve of Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, more than 5,000 women paraded along the inauguration route. When the NAWSA refused to continue its activist posture, Paul founded the Congressional Union, which became the National Women's Party (NWP) in 1916. The NWP's first action took place on January 10, 1917; four women hoisted banners outside the White House. The silent vigil continued trhough June 22, when 27 women were arrested. The protests continued and 33 women, including Paul, were ordered to the Occuquan Workhouse for disorderly conduct. Even more were sent to the District jail. Paul launched a hunger strike - the first person to do so in U.S. history - and was joined by other inmates. Public outrage eventually forced Wilson to pardon the suffragists. When Congress reconvened in January 1918, the president endorsed ratification of the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment." It passed the House but failed when the Senate fell two votes short.Paul established a "watch fire" in front of the White House where the NWP would burn Wilson's democracy speeches "as fast as he made them in Europe." Wilson ordered Congress back into special session, where the amendment passed in June and was sent to the states. In 1923 Paul drafted the Equal Rights Amendment, which was brought forward every session of Congress, but did not make it to the floor until 1972. The ratification process expired on June 30, 1982, three states short of adoption.dd content here.

//Bolling v, Sharpe//: Desegregating the District
**John Philip Sousa Junior High, 3650 Ely Place SE, Washington, DC** **, @http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/civilrights/dc4.htm**

The third of five cases to be rolled into the //Brown v. Board of Education// decision originated here. Gardner Bishop had long been trying to integrate the district's schools; in 1947 he'd attempted to enroll his daughter Judine at all-white Eliot Junior High instead of the school she'd been assigned, the all-black Browne Junior High. Though Eliot had capacity for 918 students, and only 765 enrollees, Judine was sent back to Browne. That building was made to hold 783 students and had 1,638; students were taught in double shifts. Bishop and 40 Browne students announced at a school board meeting that they and all of their fellow students would refuse to attend until conditions improved. After seeing picketing students in the press, the board promised to then the double shifts and the strike ended. The board had made an empty promise. The next school built in the district, John Philip Sousa High, opened in 1950 with an all-white student body. Bishop arrived on September 11, 1950, with 11 African American students ready to enroll, and was turned away. One of the students that day, 12-year-old Spottswood Bolling Jr., was named in a lawsuit against the president of the school board, Melvin Sharpe. //Bolling v. Sharpe// was argued on Fifth Amendment due process grounds. Wile it was making its way through the federal courts, the lowyer on the case learned from the clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court that it would be added to its docket under //Brown//.

Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist Leader
**Frederick Douglass House, Cedar Hill, 1411 W Street SE, Washington DC, (202) 426-5961 ** **, @http://www.nps.gov/frdo/index.htm**

 Frederick Douglass was born into slavery on the Holme Hill farm near Tuckahoe, Maryland. In 1826 he was sent to Baltimore to be he house servant to the family of Hugh Auld. Sophia Auld broke the law by teaching Douglass to read. Douglass also learned to write and later used the these skills to flee to Massachusetts, where abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison convinced him to lecture before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1841. He became a popular orator, and in 1845 published his autobiography. Douglass moved to Rochester, New York, in 1847, where he began publishing the //North Star// the same year. In 1872 he moved to Washington, DC, and purchased Cedar Hill in the capital's Anacostia neighborhood in 1877. In addition to running the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, Douglass advised presidents Hays and Harrison and was appointed to several government posts, including as U.S. marshal for the District, recorder of deeds, minister-resident and consul general th Haiti, and charge d'affaires for the Dominican Republic. Douglass died of a stroke at Cedar Hill on February 20, 1895. His funeral was held at the **Metropolitan A.M.E. Church**  (1518 M Street NW) in Washington before his body was returned to Rochester for burial.

Leonard Matlovich, Gay Military Pioneer
**Congressional Cemetery, 1801 E Street SE, Washington DC, (20****2) 543-0539**

Long before the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was created, a gay serviceman fought the Pentagon's anti-gay policy and, to some extent, won. Technical sergeant Leonard Matlovich volunteered for three tours in Vietnam. He earned the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart when he stepped on a land mine in Da Nang. His U.S. Air Force career eventually led him to an assignment in Langley, Virginia, where, in 1975, he gave a letter to his commanding officers announcing he was gay. After review by a military panel, Matlovich was discharged as "unfit for duty," though his service record was spotless. Matlovich sued for reinstatement, and the Pentagon eventually offered him his commission back, as long as he promised never to "practice homosexuality" again. He declined, and the suit continued. In 1978 a federal court ordered him reinstated with back pay, but the government appealed. Two years later, in an out-of-court settlement, the air force upgraded his dismissal to an honorable discahrge and fave him $160,000 in back pay. In 1986 Matlovich learned he had contracted HIV, and would become one of the first patients to volunteer for AZT trials. He died from complications of AIDS on June 22, 1988, and was buried in Washington, DC. His tombstone, with its blunt epitaph - //When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one// - has become a rallying location for opponents of the Pentagon's continued refusal to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military.

Mary Titcomb and the Birth of the Bookmobile
**Washington County Free Library, 100 S. Potomac Street, Hagerstown, MD 21740, (301) 739-3250, www.whilbr.org/bookmobile/index.aspx**

The world's first bookmobile was actually a Hagerstown book wagon set up by librarian Mary Titcomb in 1904. Titcomb had founded the Washington County Free Library in 1901, the second free public library in the United States. Three years later she put boxes of books on a horse-drawn wagon driven by Joshua Thomas and sent them out into the community. Titcomb established 66 deposit stations around that county and each received 30 new volumes on a rotating basis. In 1912 the library purchased a motorized vehicle, and the modern bookmobile was born. //(Hagerstown is about a 90 minute drive from the Washington Convention Center; two and a half hours by public transportation.)//