Booker T. Washington in the context of "Up from Slavery"

The civil rights movement was a social movement in the United States from 1954 to 1968 which aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country, which most commonly affected African Americans. The movement had origins in the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century, and modern roots in the 1940s. After years of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience campaigns, the civil rights movement achieved many of its legislative goals in the 1960s, during which it secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Following the American Civil War (1861–1865), the three Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and granted citizenship to all African Americans, the majority of whom had recently been enslaved in the southern states. During Reconstruction, African-American men in the South voted and held political office, but after 1877 they were increasingly deprived of civil rights under racist Jim Crow laws (which for example banned interracial marriage, introduced literacy tests for voters, and segregated schools) and were subjected to violence from white supremacists during the nadir of American race relations. African Americans who moved to the North in order to improve their prospects in the Great Migration also faced barriers in employment and housing. Legal racial discrimination was upheld by the Supreme Court in its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the doctrine of "separate but equal". The movement for civil rights, led by figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, achieved few gains until after World War II. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order abolishing discrimination in the armed forces.

In the United States, black-owned businesses (or black businesses), also known as African American businesses, originated in the days of slavery before 1865. Emancipation and civil rights permitted businessmen to operate inside the American legal structure starting in the Reconstruction era (1865–77) and afterwards. By the 1890s, thousands of small business operations had opened in urban areas. The most rapid growth came in the early 20th century, as the increasingly rigid Jim Crow system of segregation moved urban blacks into a community large enough to support a business establishment. The National Negro Business League—which Booker T. Washington, college president, promoted—opened over 600 chapters. It reached every city with a significant black population.

African-Americans have operated virtually every kind of company, but some of the most prominent black-owned businesses have been insurance companies including North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, banks, recording labels, funeral parlors, barber shops, cosmetics, beauty salons, newspapers, restaurants, soul food restaurants, real estate, record stores, and bookstores.

Robert Ezra Park (February 14, 1864 – February 7, 1944) was an American urban sociologist who is considered to be one of the most influential figures in early U.S. sociology. Park was a pioneer in the field of sociology, changing it from a passive philosophical discipline to an active discipline rooted in the study of human behavior. He made significant contributions to the study of urban communities, race relations and the development of empirically grounded research methods, most notably participant observation in the field of criminology. From 1905 to 1914, Park worked with Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute. After Tuskegee, he taught at the University of Chicago from 1914 to 1933, where he played a leading role in the development of the Chicago School of sociology.

Park is noted for his work in human ecology, race relations, human migration, cultural assimilation, social movements, and social disorganization He played a large role in defining sociology as a natural science and challenged the belief that sociology is a moral science. He saw sociology as "...a point of view and a method for investigating the processes by which individuals are inducted into and induced to cooperate in some sort of permanent corporate existence, society."

Eastern Avenue is one of three boundary streets between Washington, D.C., and the state of Maryland. It follows a northwest-to-southeast line, beginning at the intersection of 16th Street NW (a north-south street in the District of Columbia) and Colesville Road (a street in Montgomery County in the state of Maryland). It intersects with Blair Road NW, and ceases to exist for about 1,000 feet (300 m). Another interruption occurs at Cedar Street NW. A 3,000-foot (910 m) interruption occurs again at Galloway Street NE, where the park land of the North Michigan Park Recreation Center exists. It continues without interruption until it reaches Bladensburg Road NE. There is a 1.8-mile (2.9 km) interruption in the avenue along Fort Lincoln Cemetery. The avenue has no crossing over New York Avenue NE or the Anacostia River, or through Anacostia Park. It resumes at Kenilworth Avenue NE, with its terminus at its junction with Southern Avenue.

Several historic or important buildings are located on Eastern Avenue, and a number of important people once lived on the street. Eastern Avenue forms one of the borders of the Deanwood neighborhood in the District of Columbia, a historic African American community. Several historically important Deanwood-area churches and schools are located on Eastern Avenue. William Pittman, one of the United States' first African American architects and a son-in-law of Booker T. Washington, lived on Eastern Avenue. The Lucinda Cady House (also known as the Cady-Lee House), located at 7064 Eastern Avenue NW, is a restored Queen Anne-Victorian style home built in 1887 which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The headquarters of the missionary arm and the relief agency of the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church were once located at 6840 Eastern Avenue NW.

The Niagara Movement (NM) was a civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of activists—many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States—led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter with Mary Burnett Talbert. The Niagara Movement was organized to oppose racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Its members felt the policy of accommodation and conciliation, without voting rights, promoted by Booker T. Washington, was "unmanly." It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and took Niagara Falls as its symbol. The group did not meet in Niagara Falls, New York, but planned its first conference for nearby Buffalo during the week of July 9, 1905. To avoid a possible racist protest, Du Bois instead hired a small hotel across the border in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. The Niagara Movement was the immediate predecessor of the NAACP.

The Atlanta Compromise (also known as accommodation or accommodationism) was a proposal put forth in 1895 by African American leader Booker T. Washington in a speech he gave at the Cotton States and International Exposition. He urged Black Southerners to accept segregation and to temporarily refrain from campaigning for equal rights, including the right to vote. In return, he advocated that Black people would receive basic legal protections, access to property ownership, employment opportunities, and vocational and industrial education. Upon the speech's conclusion, the white attendees gave Washington a standing ovation.

Under the direction of Washington's Tuskegee Machine organization, the Compromise was the dominant policy pursued by Black leaders in the South from 1895 to 1915. During this period, the educational infrastructure for Black people improved, with a focus on vocational schools and schools for children. However, Southern states continued to aggressively adopt Jim Crow laws which codified segregation in nearly all aspects of life. Violence against Black people continued: over fifty Black people were lynched most years until 1922. Beginning around 1910 – contrary to the advice offered by Washington in his speech – millions of African Americans began migrating northward, relocating to major urban centers in the North.