Kicha's photos with the keyword: Washington, DC

Margaret 'Pete' Peters and younger sister Matilda Roumania 'Repeat' Peters photographed at Tuskegee Institute, circa 1932. Decades before Venus and Serena Williams overpowered the sport of tennis, two other talented African American women changed the face of women's tennis. Margaret and Matilda Peters, affectionately known as 'Pete" and Repeat'. The Peters made history with their doubles record from the 1930s to the 1950s. At a time when African Americans were not allowed to compete against whites, the Peters sisters played in the American Tennis Association, which was created specifically to give blacks a forum to play tennis competitively. Born just two years apart in Washington, DC., the sisters began to play competitively when they were teenagers in the 1930s. Margaret and Roumania (also known as Matilda), both played for the American Tennis Association (ATA), which was created in 1916 to organize Negro Tennis Clubs across the country and to provide competitions for African-American tennis players. At that time tennis, like most other sports, was segregated so African Americans were not allowed to compete against whites. Prior to the ATA, African-American tennis players could only participate in invitational and interstate tournaments. At one such event in New York in 1916 the organizers came up with the idea of a national association for African-American tennis players. The ATA was officially formed on November 30, 1916, in Washington, D.C. The first tournament sponsored by the ATA did not even offer a competition for women's doubles. The 1917 national championship tournament in Baltimore only had three events, which were men's singles, women's singles, and men's doubles. In 1935 Margaret Peters was offered a full scholarship to attend Tuskegee University. She had been recruited by the athletic director Cleveland Leigh Abbott, who noticed her playing in the ATA. Margaret was reluctant to leave her family in Washington, D.C., so she waited for Matilda to finish high school and then the two sisters went to Tuskegee in 1937. They both graduated from college in 1941 with degrees in physical education. The sisters then moved to New York where they earned master's degrees in physical education from New York University. During and after college, the Peters sisters dominated the ATA. Between 1938-1941 and 1944-1953 they won 14 ATA doubles championships. Matilda Peters also won two singles ATA titles in 1944 and 1946. For the second title she defeated the legendary Althea Gibson. Gibson later went on to make history of her own when she became the first African-American woman to play competitive tennis against whites in 1950. During their reign as ATA champions, the Peters sisters were quite famous. They were often asked to pose for publicity photographs and they even played exhibition matches for English royalty. Compared to the other successful African-American women tennis players such as Althea Gibson and the Williams sisters, the Peters sisters had not received much recognition for their accomplishments. However, there has been some renewed interest in their role in tennis history. In 1977 the Peters sisters were inducted into the Tuskegee Hall of Fame. In 2003 they were given an achievement award by the United States Tennis Association (USTA) and inducted into the USTA's Mid-Atlantic Section Hall of Fame. Matilda Peters Walker, died on May 16, 2003 at the age of 85. She had the distinction of being the only African American woman known to have beaten Althea Gibson, the youngster to whom the sisters eventually passed the torch. Margaret Peters passed away on November 3, 2004, just one week shy of her 90th birthday. Source: midatlanticusta.com

Anti-lynching protesters as they stood in silence in Washington DC. Each wearing the name of those who have been lynched in The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave . Source: The Washington Post

Emma Frances Grayson Merritt was born on January 11, 1860, in Dumfries, Virginia, one of seven children, the third of four daughters of John and Sophia (Cook) Merritt. When she was three years of age, her parents moved to Washington, D.C. Merritt was a teacher well before she received any higher education. She taught first grade in the public schools of the District of Columbia beginning in 1875, when she was 15. She continued to teach while completing the normal school program (1883-87) at Howard University. In 1897 she was appointed an elementary school principal. She continued intermittent study of the social sciences at Columbia (later named George Washington) University until the end of the century. Merritt established the very first kindergarten in the United States for black children in 1897. She became director of primary instruction in the District of Columbia in 1898 and a supervising principal in 1927, remaining in that role until her retirement in 1930. At historically black universities and colleges throughout the country, Merritt was a prized lecturer in the education of young children. She was an organizer and director of the Teachers' Benefit and Annuity Association in the District of Columbia and president of the capital branch of the NAACP, among many civic responsibilities. She died on June 8, 1933, in Washington DC. The location of the Emma F.G. Merritt Public School is on the site of the former Suburban Gardens Amusement Park in a building constructed in 1943. According to oral history given by former teachers, while the site has changed, the philosophy of self reliance has essentially remained the same. Now called Merritt Educational Center, the school is located at 5002 Hayes Street, NE., Washington D.C., Sources: Deanwood, A Model of Self-Sufficiency in Far Northeast Washington, DC, Deanwood History Project; Biographical Dictionary of Modern American Educators, by Frederik Ohles, Shirley M. Ohles, and John G. Ramsay; The Voice, vol. 1, 1904