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Washington, D.C, and on July 31, 1907, according to a family legend, as they crossed the Potomac River to enter a new life, Amelia Thomas instructed Kathryn "to remove her shoes and knock the Georgia sand from them." 14 They arrived at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on 6th and Constitution avenue, N.W., the site now occupied by the National Gallery of Art. 15

The Thomases settled at 1530 15th Street, N.W., now identified on the National Register as the residence where Alma Woodsey Thomas lived for 71 years.  The site continues to be the family home where her sister, John Maurice, and grand-nephew, Charles Thomas Lewis, now reside.

During the first half of the twentieth century, Washington, D. C. was a Jim Crow city, just as Columbus, Georgia and other parts of the United States.  As the nation's capital, it provided African Americans with better educational and employment opportunities than most localities.  The District grew as blacks traveled to Washington, seeking those means.  After Reconstruction, intellectuals and educated me and women, the "brown brain trust" 16 of the country, were evident in the nation's capital.  African Americans were present in federal and local government as civil servants, and teachers, and a few worked as lawyers, dentists, doctors, and businessmen and women.  Some of the most prominent personalities during the New Deal and afterwards were Robert Weaver, adviser in the Labor Department, Judge William Hastie, civilian aide to the Secretary of War, Mary McLeod Bethune of the National Council of Negro Women, Crystal

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