The Anthony Bowen YMCA grew from the work of Anthony Bowen, a formerly enslaved minister who founded the nation's first independent "colored" YMCA at a time when slavery was legal in Washington and most of the city's African Americans, though free, faced daily segregation and exclusion from public facilities. It first operated in Reverend Bowen's Southwest Washington home, then in rented rooms, donated spaces, and briefly in a building on 11th Street, NW, before Reverend Jesse E. Moorland incorporated it in 1905 as the "colored" branch of the YMCA of the City of Washington and led fundraising for a building at 1816 12th Street, NW that opened in 1912. For 50 years it was the only YMCA in the District serving African Americans. At the YMCA, educator and civil rights champion E.B. Henderson introduced basketball to African Americans in DC in 1907 and led the Washington 12 Streeters to victory in the 1910 World Colored Basketball Championships, while future NBA star Elgin Baylor played pick-up games there during the 1940s and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall developed strategies to fight segregation there. Scores of workers, athletes, politicians, artists, professionals, and young people found support in its halls and gyms. Renamed in 1972 to honor Bowen, the YMCA closed its Twelfth Street facility in 1982 after the rundown building was declared unsafe, then reopened in 1987 at the former Hillcrest Children's Center to continue offering education, refuge from troubled times, and development of mind, body, spirit, and community.