Josephine Butler

Josephine Dorothy Butler (January 24, 1920 ― March 29, 1997) was an American activist. She co-founded and was chairman of the D.C. Statehood Party to combat the lack of selected representation in congress for her district. Butler played a significant role in the desegregation and merging of two neighborhood schools into one, the Adams-Morgan elementary school. She also was the founder of one of the first black women's unions in the DC area. Butler and other students attended school in shanties in the woods until it became possible to attend the newly-constructed Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Some local whites violently opposed black education, stoning school buses and threatening parents. Butler recalled, "They saw that if we got more education we would go to the city and get better jobs and then white farm owners would have no one to work in their fields." As a result of Butler's school attendance, her father lost work, forcing her mother to work in Washington, D.C., as a live-in domestic servant. Butler's husband was a hob carrier in the construction field when they married. He later worked his way up to shop steward and was a member of the Laborers Union in D.C. Both began organizing laborers in their respective industries, and Butler organized the first black women's laundry workers union. Late in the 1930s, Butler heard Paul Robeson and Henry A. Wallace speak about the fight for racial justice in America. Butler described it as "like an awakening of something that was dormant.", deciding to join the fight for progressive social change. Butler separated from her husband and moved to Bethesda, Maryland. Butler later discovered she was blacklisted from further government employment.

After the landmark case of Brown versus the Board of Education of 1954, Butler became a leading figure in the merge of two public elementary schools. Leading the charge, she worked to combine then all-white John Quincy Adams Elementary School and then all-black Thomas P. Morgan Elementary School in 1955. This led to the new school being named the Adams-Morgan elementary school. As a result of her activism, the surrounding neighborhood also changed its name to the Adams-Morgan neighborhood. Butlers' dedication for representation was spurred by the fight surrounding the Highway Act of 1968.

Butler was co-chair of Friends of Meridian Hill, a group dedicated to rehabilitating Meridian Hill Park in northwest D.C., This was rooted in efforts to create safe, beautiful spaces for community gathering and family and children enjoyment. In 1994, she introduced President Bill Clinton at an Earth Day speech in the park. Clinton later awarded Butler the National Partnership-Leadership Award. The following year, she organized an Earth Day parade of 4,000 people to the United States Capitol, where she addressed a crowd of 250,000.

Legacy Josephine Butler Parks Center was named to honor her life and legacy. To honor her memory and political activism in surrounding environmental issues and community, the Washington group Parks and People memorialized the Park Center by naming it to the Josephine Butler Parks Center.