The neighborhood that many middle-class Black Washingtonians called home was a world unto itself: the U Street corridor, sometimes called the “Black Broadway,” had hosted Duke Ellington and Pearl Bailey and Ella Fitzgerald; the professional neighborhoods of the northwest quadrant housed doctors, lawyers, professors, and government employees who had built successful careers within the constraints of segregation.

Howard University was both a geographic and intellectual anchor for this community.

The NAACP, the Urban League, and dozens of other civil rights organizations had offices or significant presences in the city.

It was also a city where Jim Crow operated in everything from restaurants to public transportation.

Washington’s segregation was both legal and enforced until the civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s began to dismantle it.

A Black woman inventor in this city faced not only the general barriers that all women inventors faced — skepticism, exclusion from professional networks, difficulty accessing capital — but also the specific additional barriers of race.