Fifty years ago this week, when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators came from across the country to take part in the 1963 March on Washington, the city was not yet the cosmopolitan capital that it arguably is today.
But it was a mecca for African-Americans, says historian Marya McQuirter.
"Washington was definitely a different city 50 years ago," she says, "for a number of reasons. By 1957, it had become the largest majority black city in the country."
That was, in part, because of "white flight," she says, but also because D.C. was "an attractive place for African-Americans migrating from the South."
As well as from the North.
Ella Kelly came to Washington from New York's Harlem, first to study at Howard University, then to live.
"It was Southern, and you learned that very quickly," she says. "I don't mean that in a negative way. There were things such as you'd stand at the corner, waiting to take the bus, and little ladies would say, 'Good morning.' That kind of thing."
Kelly, a retired public school teacher and government worker, remembers Washington then as a beautiful city. But she remembers ugliness, too, like the time she and her husband looked at an apartment for rent.
"The manager of the building was an African-American woman," Kelly says. "There was a sign outside that said, 'Apartment available.' We knocked on the front door. She came to the door, and she said, 'We don't rent to colored.' She was a person of color. My husband and I looked at each other ... 'OK, whatever,' and we left."
That kind of segregation was not uncommon in Washington.
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