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Slavery and neighborhood beginnings
Before English settlers arrived around 1696, the present-day neighborhood of Georgetown in Washington, D.C., was known as Tahoga, a village of the Nacotchtank Native Americans. During the 1700s the area was a separate community from the City of Washington and part of the Province of Maryland. Local businesspeople developed a shipping port for tobacco cultivated from the surrounding area and Georgetown soon became one of the largest tobacco shipping ports in the country. In order to keep up with labor demands for these businesses, White merchants began importing Black slaves. Not only did these slaves work for local businesses, they were also forced to work in people's homes. These slaves soon became the backbone of the local economy.

The slaves forced into labor were also treated as outcasts and what limited rights they did have were often curtailed by local laws. In 1795 Georgetown officials passed legislation that forbade Blacks from gathering in groups larger than six people. The exception to this law was they were allowed to gather for church on Sundays, but they could not be near White congregants. The Black population quickly grew in Georgetown with the 1800 census recording 1,449 slaves and 277 "free blacks" out of a total population of 5,120. The free Blacks were still subject to discriminatory laws aimed at slaves and seen as "bad examples" by slave owners.

On June 3, 1814, a group of 125 free Black members from Montgomery Street Church (now known as Dumbarton United Methodist Church) established their own congregation due to continued segregation practices, which included separate seating and communion as well as baptisms in Rock Creek on the east side of Georgetown instead of inside a church. The new church was overseen by White officials from Montgomery and the congregation was not allowed to have its own Black pastor until 50 years later. In 1816 the congregation purchased a lot at 27th and P Streets NW and built a small church called "The Meeting House" and "The Ark". The church established a Sabbath School for Black children and adults in 1823, teaching them how to read and write. The congregation was renamed Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844. Following an internal dispute, a faction of the 549 members left in 1849 and formed their own congregation, African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Mount Zion Cemetery located at 27th and Q Streets NW includes a crypt that was allegedly a stop on the Underground Railroad. The Mount Zion congregation would later build a new church at 1334 29th Street NW, with the cornerstone laid in 1876. Mount Zion became one of several Black churches that were established in the eastern section of Georgetown, serving as religious gathering places for a growing Black neighborhood named Herring Hill. By 1860 Herring Hill had a population of 951.

During the mid-1800s the population of Georgetown greatly increased, including the number of free Blacks, but slavery continued until the outbreak of the Civil War. Eight months before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he signed a law that freed local slaves. After the war, large numbers of newly freed slaves moved from the South and settled in the area. Between 1865 when the war ended and 1870, the number of Black residents in Georgetown increased from 1,935 to 3,271, which created a working class community centered in Herring Hill.