Frelinghuysen University/Jesse Lawson and Rosetta C. Lawson
1800 Vermont Avenue, NW
Frelinghuysen University was founded in 1917 to provide education, religious training, and social services for Black working-class adults. Founders include Jesse Lawson, a Howard University-educated lawyer; his wife Rosetta C. Lawson, an advocate for temperance and low-income housing; and Howard sociologist Kelly Miller. The school’s name honored U.S. Senator Frederick T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, a civil rights activist during Reconstruction (1865-1877).
After starting out in private homes and businesses, the school bought this house in 1921 and held classes here until 1927. Anna J. Cooper ran its successor, the Frelinghuysen Group of Schools for Colored Working People, from 1940 until it closed in the late 1950s.
Photo:
Frelinghuysen law graduates, 1917
Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.
Smithsonian Institution
Marker is at the intersection of Vermont Avenue and 11th Street, NW on Vermont Avenue.
Courtesy hmdb.org
