Episode 5: DC’s Renaissance in the U Street Corridor
The Republic Theatre, a movie house on U Street, before it was demolished to make room for Metro. Photograph by Robert McNeill, provided by Susan McNeill.
Black Broadway, the DC Renaissance, U Street, NW.
“Never before, anywhere had I seen such persons of influence — men with some money, women with some beauty, teachers with some education — quite so sure of their own importance and their high places in the community.”
-Langston Hughes
With folks like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and countless teachers, doctors, and business people living and commiserating in DC’s famed U Street Corridor, the DC Renaissance was born. And it was DC that paved the way for Harlem.
