The corner of 14th and U Streets has long been a city crossroads, a neighborhood gathering place, and a setting for events that shook the city and the nation. It served city residents as a transfer point for crosstown streetcars and buses and stood at the heart of an African American business and professional downtown. It also became a fault line in the struggle for equal rights for black Americans in the 20th century, as some of the nation’s first picket lines marched there in the 1930s when the New Negro Alliance protested discrimination in hiring by local businesses. Among the protesters was Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, educator, and advisor to four U.S. presidents. The 1938 United States Supreme Court decision that followed affirmed constitutional rights that later supported the sit-ins of the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In April 1968, the corner became the flashpoint for riots after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the violent protest destroyed businesses along 14th Street, 7th Street, and in other parts of the city. In 1986, the Frank G. Reeves Municipal Center rose where the riots had begun and became both a symbol and a sparkplug for a neighborhood renaissance, followed by new restaurants, shops, nightclubs, a new subway stop, and the restoration of historic buildings as U Street again became a lively urban community.