So I Figured Out The Name Of The Law That Granted The District The Right To Elect Its Own Board Of Education:

So I figured out the name of the law that granted the District the right to elect its own board of education: District of Columbia Elected Board of Education Act, approved April 22, 1968; Public Law 90-292, 82 Stat. 101. This link is President Johnson's remarks upon signing the bill.

It's important to note that Dr. King was assassinated on April 4; riots erupted in Washington and continued through April 12. After some public uncertainty about whether the protest would continue, the SCLC's Poor People's Campaign began on the National Mall on May 12. This is the atmosphere in which this bill was signed, and it's equally important to note that after an oblique reference to the city "in crisis," President Johnson openly calls for congressional representation and home rule for the District.

This GPO pamphlet also seems like it may be important later on, although I'm unsure of how to use it now.

Records from the Senate's Committee on the District of Columbia from 1816-1972. Of special note are records from the Radical Republican-controlled Senate of the Reconstruction era (the Senate fought for Kate Brown, one of their employees, to be able to ride on whites-only trains) and records on the nonstop flow of home rule bills considered after the LEgislative Reorganization Act of 1946.

Committee papers and bill files from the House of Representatives' Committee on the District of Columbia. Of special interest are those in the third set (1947-1968), which include documents pertaining to District home rule.

Well. St. John’s wort certainly does work wonders for dissertation depression. Holla!

The American white republic has to ask itself why it was necessary for them to invent the nigger. I am not a nigger. I have never called myself one. But one comes into the world and the world decides that you are this for its own reasons, and it is very important, I think, for the American in terms of the future, in terms of his health, in terms of the transformation we are all seeking, that he face this question, that he needed the nigger for something.

James Baldwin, 1963

the latest intro

So the last intro draft has been moved to my "Contribution to the Field" section. Here's the new intro:

While the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ensured that African-Americans would have the right to vote granted by the Fifteenth Amendment, this legislation did little for the voting prospects of the residents of the District of Columbia. Denied the right to elect their own local government or representatives to the U.S. Congress, Washingtonians of all races had only been allowed to vote for president the previous year, in the first presidential election since Congress passed the Twenty-Third Amendment. Although Washington had long been home to active movements for legislative autonomy from Congress and African-American civil rights, these movements remained largely separate until the District became a majority-minority city in the 1950s. Despite early civil rights successes in the 1940s and 1950s and agitation for District voting rights by national organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the desire for home rule remained largely unrealized until the late 1960s and early 1970s - after the alleged end of the civil rights movement. How did the city’s changing demographics and relationship with the national civil rights struggle impact the century-old battle for home rule and the city’s relationship with the U.S. Congress? How does the District of Columbia fit into the larger narrative of the black protest movement?