John Wesley A.M.E. Church, 1615 14th Street, NW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This church hosted meetings of the Committee for School Desegregation, which developed the strategy for the court cases challenging "separate but equal" laws in public schools across the nation.  The leader of this effort, Charles Hamilton Houston, was Dean of Howard University Law School and special legal counsel to the NAACP.  Beginning in 1934, Houston developed the field of civil rights litigation, and trained Thurgood Marshall, who later successfully argued the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.  That case was built upon the strategies first developed by Houston and others here.  Built in the 1850s, the church was renovated and restored after a 1979 fire.