Scope and Contents

Asbury United Methodist Church Oral History Project features interviews from members of Asbury United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. These episodes are drawn from oral histories of members of one of Washington’s historic Black churches. Asbury has been at the corner of 11th and K Streets Northwest since its founding in 1836. These church members share their personal experiences with Black history, national history and the history of the Washington, D.C., area.

Scope and Contents From the Collection:

D.C. Oral History Collaborative (DCOHC) is a citywide initiative to train community members in oral history skills, fund new and ongoing oral history projects, connect volunteers with oral history projects, and publicize existing oral history collections. DCOHC is a project of DC Public Library, HumanitiesDC, and the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. This collection contains oral history interviews, transcripts, and indexes produced by DCOHC grantees.

Abstract

Ms. Shanice discusses growing up in D.C., in several different neighborhoods, her family, going to high school and coming into herself, going to clubs and sex work, the impact of the AIDS epidemic, the violence transgender women faced and the killing of a close friend, getting involved in non-profit work, and the changes in the city.

Abstract Wilhelmina Goff describes growing up in segregated Columbia, South Carolina, where her father became one of the first Black men to register to vote. After experiencing segregation on buses in Columbia, she becomes involved in the Morgan State College student sit-in movement that desegregated stores, lunch counters and a movie theater in Baltimore. She starts her career as an educator in Ohio, where she also served as the Midwest regional director of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She...