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Street, was organized in 1873 by the well-known black cleric, Alexander Crummell. The building, consecrated in 1879, was designed by the city's first black architect, Calvin T.S. Brent.16

Making ends meet for a growing family in the city was more difficult than it had been in Columbus. Amelia Thomas supplemented the family income by designing and sewing clothes in her home for wealthy white clients. She was by all accounts a splendid [[strikethrough]] seamstress [[/strikethrough]] dressmaker, and her youngest daughter recalled the gorgeous clothing that she made for her girls. Alma said of her mother, "...she loved to sew for us, and her sewing was just like my paintings. She was happy when she was creating something very beautiful for us."17 Furthermore, for decades blacks could not try on clothes at Washington's fashionable Garfinckel's department store; thus, it was better to design and sew clothes at home than to purchase expensive garments that might not fit, and this is what the Thomas women did.18

Her mother's eye for good design and a feeling for fashion was passed onto Alma, x who later majored in  ?  costume design at Howard University. x?  Indeed, Alma's fashionable clothes were often noticed and were the subject of comment all of her life. At the gala opening of her Corcoran retrospective the Post noted that "she didn't really want a party for fear of spilling something on her special long red silk dress on her special day."19  For her art exhibition openings, Thomas coordinated her appearance to complement her art, carefully