Although the World Missions for Christ Church is only two miles—an eight-minute drive—away from the White House, the two neighborhoods are seemingly worlds apart: Eastern Shaw District: Home to the World Missions for Christ Church Black: 92 percent White: 4 percent Hispanic or Latino: 3 percent Asian: 1 percent Native American: Less than one percent Median age: 37 Average household size: 2.79 Median household income: $45,938 Percent below poverty level: 15 Average rent per unit: $517 The Capitol District: Home to the White House White: 90 percent Black: 4 percent Hispanic or Latino: 4 percent Asian: 2 percent Native American: Less than one percent Median age: 40 Average household size: 1.68 Median household income: $92,540 Percent below poverty level: 5 Average rent per unit: $788 * Based on 2000 U.S. Census results Source: American FactFinder

Washington, D.C. is a city of contradictions. As the capital of the United States, it is home to the country’s president and the U.S. Capitol Building, and serves as the seat of the federal government. Yet it was also the nation’s “murder capital” in recent years, with the highest homicide rate in the country: 45.8 murders per 100,000 residents in 2002. Just blocks away from the affluence of the Capitol district are some of the country’s poorest neighborhoods, such as the Shaw district, home to the World Missions for Christ Church in LET THE CHURCH SAY AMEN.

D.C.’s urban design is centered around the Capitol building itself, with the rest of the city located in relation to the center in one of four quadrants: Southwest, Southeast, Northeast and Northwest, the area where Shaw lies. The World Missions for Christ Church is located in the neighborhood’s eastern part, which remains poorer, less developed and less commercial than western Shaw.

A traditionally African American community, Shaw was named after Civil War Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and grew out of freed slave encampments in the 1800s. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the epicenter for African American intellectual and cultural life in the U.S., pre-dating New York City’s Harlem Renaissance by at least two decades. This movement nurtured the work of jazz legend Duke Ellington, perhaps the neighborhood’s most famous native.

Shaw began to decline in the early 1960s, when many of its middle-class residents began leaving for the suburbs, fueled by the passage of the Equal Housing Act and the end of legalized housing discrimination. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, local riots destroyed the neighborhood. In the decades that followed, many of Shaw’s historic Victorian row houses succumbed to economic decay.

Over the past decade, parts of western Shaw have witnessed rapid gentrification and urban renewal. Historic landmarks such as the Lincoln Theater have been renovated, and new shops and restaurants have appeared, although the neighborhood’s eastern district still remains mostly undeveloped. Shaw’s central location and variety of 19th-century row houses have made it a popular destination for more affluent professionals, and its revival appears to be ongoing.

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