DC is a tragic story. During Reconstruction, DC was home to a thriving black elite: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/books/review/original-bla.... Dunbar High School (where today, 100% of students are classified as “economically disadvantaged”) was an elite secondary school for black people where at the turn of the 20th century, the majority of students went to college, including many to Ivy League universities. The Shaw neighborhood had hundreds of black-owned businesses.

The end of Reconstruction and the return of southern white people to political power ended that. Woodrow Wilson, a progressive southern Democrat and vicious racist, kicked things off by segregating the federal workforce, which up to that point had employed many black professionals. Segregation eventually took over the whole city, decimating the formerly thriving black elite. During the latter half of the century, Shaw was a typical disadvantaged black neighborhood. It remained that way until the 21st century, when the neighborhood was gentrified by progressive white millennials: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/black-branding--how-a-d...