Following the success of the pilot Who Lives Here—a three-part video series for TikTok and Instagram highlighting the historic Black women-owned properties of LeDroit Park—the DC History Center and Briana Thomas are excited to announce the continuation of the impactful and educational series.
The second season of Who Lives Here features four new episodes that help expand the narratives of DC’s housing history and national civil rights pioneers. The DC History Center collaborates with local historian and author of Black Broadway in Washington, D.C. Briana Thomas to inform and educate the community about the intersection of systemic racism and real estate. By exploring their former residences, viewers are introduced to historic activists whose research and advocacy intersected with landmark Supreme Court cases and federal policy changes to advance the causes of equality in housing, public accommodations, and beyond. The episodes highlight pioneering Washingtonians who advanced access to “equal space” for Americans of color—in the District and nationwide.
Amid the challenges of the Segregation Era, Washington, DC neighborhoods were home to some of America’s best and brightest Black leaders, activists, and educators who paved the way for the wide-spread victories of the civil rights movement. DC scholars and lawyers like Charles Hamilton Houston and Howard University graduate Thurgood Marshall, along with activists Mary McLeod Bethune and Dorothy Height, fought the early fight for racial equality in the nation’s capital and beyond.
At a time when segregation, discrimination, racial covenants, redlining, and urban renewal displaced African Americans from their homes and limited opportunities for property ownership, financing, equal education, and much more, these luminaries mobilized, lobbied, trained, and fought until federal freedoms were won for local and national residents. By exploring these histories through the houses, where they lived and work, we connect real places that still exist today to these meaningful histories of race in DC.
This series is made possible by the National Association of Realtors. Its creation is an effort to deepen understanding of DC’s local history and shed light on repeated patterns of discrimination against housing for people of color, as well as challenge disparities in minority homeownership today. The full-length videos are available on the DC History Center’s Youtube channel. Shorter versions will appear on Instagram (@dchistory) and TikTok (@brianaindc) this summer.
About Briana Thomas
Briana A. Thomas is a Washington, DC-based historian, journalist, and tour guide who specializes in the research of DC history and culture. Briana is the author of the local history book, Black Broadway in Washington, D.C. Briana is the Arts and Culture Writer for Washingtonian Magazine, and a frequent contributor to Smithsonian Magazine. She has also been published in the historic Afro-American newspaper and The Washington Post throughout her journalism career. Briana’s educational DC history walking tour company has been featured on television networks such as ABC, NBC and CBS. She earned a Master of Journalism degree from the University of Maryland-College Park and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Communications.