Black Broadway and Beyond: A Cultural History of Washington, DC

Long before Washington was a brunch destination or a tech-adjacent boomtown, it was one of the most important centers of Black American life, art, and intellect in the country. That history is not a footnote to the city — it is the foundation of its culture. Here is a tour of the Washington that gave America jazz greats, its own genre of music, and a university that shaped generations of leaders.

Black Broadway: the U Street corridor

In the early and mid-20th century, the U Street neighborhood was known as "Black Broadway" — a thriving corridor of theaters, jazz clubs, businesses, and social life that flourished during segregation, when Black Washingtonians built a world of their own. The Howard Theatre, which opened in 1910, hosted the era's greatest performers. Duke Ellington, born in Washington in 1899, came up in this world before he became one of the towering figures of American music.

The neighborhood suffered in the unrest that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and the disinvestment of the decades after. Its revival in the 21st century has been dramatic — and complicated, raising hard questions about who gets to stay as a historic Black neighborhood becomes one of the city's most expensive. But the cultural memory endures, marked by the restored Howard Theatre, the African American Civil War Memorial, and the murals that keep the story visible.

Howard University: "The Mecca"

Founded in 1867, Howard University is one of the nation's most influential historically Black colleges and universities — affectionately called "The Mecca." Its alumni and faculty have included figures who shaped American law, arts, science, and politics, from Thurgood Marshall's legal circle to generations of writers, doctors, and public servants. Howard is not just a campus; it is a cultural engine whose homecoming is a citywide event and whose influence radiates across the country.

Go-go: the beat of the city

Washington gave America a musical genre entirely its own: go-go. Emerging in the 1970s and popularized by Chuck Brown — the "Godfather of Go-Go" — it is a percussion-driven, call-and-response, non-stop funk built for live performance and community. For decades it has been the soundtrack of Black DC: block parties, cookouts, and clubs. In 2020, after a public campaign to protect the music from being silenced, go-go was formally designated the official music of the District of Columbia — a recognition that the city's culture belongs to the people who created it.

East of the river: Anacostia's legacy

Across the Anacostia River lies some of the oldest and most historically significant Black community in the city. Historic Anacostia is home to the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site — Cedar Hill, where the great abolitionist and statesman lived his final years — and the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum, which centers the stories of the communities around it. Long underinvested and too often overlooked, the neighborhoods east of the river carry a cultural weight the rest of the city is only beginning to fully honor.

A living culture, not a museum

What makes Washington a Black cultural capital is not only its history but its continuity. Ben's Chili Bowl, opened on U Street in 1958, still serves the same half-smoke it did when it was a gathering place through the neighborhood's hardest years. Go-go still spills out of corners on summer nights. Howard still sends its graduates into the world. To understand Washington — the real Washington, not the one on the postcards — you have to understand this culture, and the people who built and sustain it. It is, in every sense, the soul of the city.