"Private schools in Washington are like that. We don't integrate. We prefer not to."

Typing Class, Washington School for Secretaries

In the spring of 1961 two chapters of Iota Phi Lambda Sorority, a national organization of African-American business and professional women, conducted a survey to determine if African-Americans had equal access to business training in the Nation's Capital. 

Of the 12 business schools that participated in the study, six acknowledged placing racial restrictions on admissions, reported Jean M. White in The Washington Post ("Trade School Aid Sought for Negroes," May 27, 1961). The schools included Strayer Junior College of Finance, the Washington School for Secretaries, American Institute, Benjamin Franklin University and Stenotype Institute of Washington.

Benjamin Franklin University was the only school that did not respond to White's request for a comment.

A spokesman for the Washington School for Secretaries acknowledged that the school "has no Negro students."

Although Marvin Martilla of the Temple Secretarial School said "Negroes are admitted to all classes," White disputed his statement, reporting that Temple "only accepts Negroes on a segregated basis."

E.G. Purvis, president, of Strayer College explained his stance: "We just couldn't afford to take 40 colored students and have 60 or 90 white students leave."

"Lee Manahan, director of the American Institute, said Negroes are accepted in the keypunch and IBM departments but not as students in the secretarial or self-improvement courses," White reported.

Ruth Everett, director, the Stenotype Institute was unapologetic about the school's segregationist policies. "Private schools in Washington are like that. We don't integrate. We prefer not to," she told White.

In time, more schools began to desegregate as they felt pressure to generate higher numbers of students. 

Washington School for Secretaries, 1920s Handbook

Washington, D.C.: "The Secret City"

As I've mentioned before, the history of the Nation's Capital is very much an African-American story because it was these Americans who filled the demand for labor in the city, initially as slaves and later in low-paying jobs as cleaning women, nannies, porters and custodians.

Gaining access to skilled, better paying jobs as clerical workers wasn't as easy.

Constance McLaughlin Green addressed this in her book, "The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital." 

Washington Post deputy managing editor, Ben W. Gilbert, reviewed the book in an article titled, "The Negro's Painful Rise" published on May 11, 1967.

"Americans generally assume that the Nation's history is one of steady progress, of technological improvements, of widening horizons, of improved living," he wrote. "The story of the Negro in Washington is not such a fairy tale. It is a story of adversity and a little progress, accompanied by a shocking indifference and some hostility from the mass of whites."

Gilbert explained that any progress that was made was thwarted in the 1880s.

"The segregation of Government employment by race, begun at the turn of the century, became policy under Wilson, whose first wife was distressed to see Negroes and whites working together in the Post Office," he added.

Gilbert credits Harold Ickes, Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, with laying "the public foundation of today's integrated city by insisting that the facilities under his jurisdiction be used without discrimination."

"Mrs. Green's book should prove valuable to anyone caring about the future of race relations in Washington," he wrote. "It would be great if funds could be found to make it available as a standard text in the city's high schools. Today's youth need to know how we got where we are. Mrs. Green can help them find out."

"The Secret City" is available on Goodreads (click).