Ophelia Settle Egypt
After graduating from Howard University in 1925, Ophelia Settle Egypt taught high school and earned advanced degrees in sociology. When she returned to her alma mater to teach and mentor aspiring social workers in 1939, Egypt settled in Garfield Heights, a neighborhood tracing its legacy of Black homeownership to land deeded to formerly enslaved African Americans by President James A. Garfield.
Ophelia Settle Egypt (1903-1984) was born in Texas and came to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University. After graduating in 1925, she taught high school and earned advanced degrees in sociology (MA, University of Pennsylvania, 1928; MS, Columbia University, 1944; advance certificate toward PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1950). Upon returning to Washington in 1939, Egypt taught at Howard’s School of Social Work until 1951. She founded the Parklands Planned Parenthood Clinic, which was renamed for her in 1981.
Selected quotations from an interview conducted on December 9, 1970 and archived in the Evolution of a Community collection.
Now up in Garfield [Heights] was…an old group…of people…all of these people own their homes. And that's where this section got its name, the Garfield part of it. Because…they had lived on land that was…originally given their families by President Garfield…
Howard University Centennial Seal, James Amos Porter, 1961-1967. Colored pencil, graphite, and ink on paper. Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution. 1997.0020.0067
Many of her neighbors were also her colleagues.
Well, this row was called Social Work Row because the person who was agent for this property was the husband of the woman who was dean of the School of Social Work, Mrs. Lindsay, now Doctor [Inabel Burns] Lindsay. And…most of us were in some way either teaching in the School of Social Work or working there in some capacity.
Guests at an event at the Frederick Douglass Community Center, Washington, D.C., c. 1943-1945. The community center served residents of the Frederick Douglass Dwellings, a large public housing project in Ophelia Egypt's neighborhood. Henry Bazemore Collection of Frederick Douglass Dwellings Photographs. Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution. Photo by Frank J. Jackson. ACM-2009.7008.21
As a large public housing project took shape near Social Work Row, Egypt and her neighbors organized to welcome new residents.
Just before they built the project, we started the little co-op store in one of the basements of one of these houses. And in that way, we formed the committee—I happened to be on the committee—to visit all of the residents as they came into the new project and welcome them into the community and tell them about the store and get them interested in the civic…association….We had a very active one, and we tried to get them involved in that. Some of them became very involved.
Like Egypt, the majority of Social Work Row residents had master’s degrees.
Everybody had high school, college, and most of us had master’s…and some had PhDs. And then the people, when the project was built, of course…most of them had much less formal education.
The new neighbors felt determined to improve their circumstances and the neighborhood simultaneously.
….[S]ome worked in government. Some were laborers…some were domestics—but they were all very eager to get ahead and get out of the project….They liked…the idea of living in the homes, which were very nice and very well-kept, inside and out. But they didn't like the idea of being designated as poor, so they moved out as fast as they were able to. This was just for them a stopping place, but while they were stopping, they were going to contribute to the community.
By the 1950s, however, families displaced by the ongoing “urban renewal” in the city’s southwest quadrant streamed into southeastern neighborhoods like Garfield Heights. Subsequent residents of the housing project near Egypt had even less financial security. The property itself also suffered from inadequate funding.
And while we have support, still many wonderful people over there, some are so disadvantaged that it’s just very difficult for the place to be kept clean, and the Housing Authority hadn’t the money to keep it up as it was supposed to have done. So it’s run down, down, down, down, and they have rats and everything else around here now, but we’re all still struggling together, trying to get things better.
Egypt was one of twenty-five outstanding Anacostians honored by the Anacostia Historical Society for their contributions to the Anacostia community. Honorees had their portrait sketched by artist Phillip Ratner, who taught art at Anacostia High School. Ophelia Egypt, Phillip Ratner, 1977. Graphite on paper. Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution. 2014.0028.0023
Egypt’s investment in her community might have had roots in oral histories that she conducted with formerly enslaved African Americans while working as an instructor and research assistant at Fisk University.
These ex-slave interviews that I did way back in the [19]20s convinced me, more than anything I know, how much we had contributed to the building of this country….[W]hat we have got to fight for is our rights.
Egypt taught at Howard until 1951. Her involvement with the community grew.
Once I stopped teaching at Howard, I started the Planned…Parenthood clinic down here at Parklands. So we did, at one time, have most people around here coming into the clinic.
Although the clinic named for Egypt closed in 2014, her legacy lives on through The Ophelia Egypt Training Room at the Carol Whitehill Moses Center in Washington, D.C. in 2023. Courtesy of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.
Egypt served as the Parklands Clinic’s director from 1957 to 1968. The clinic was renamed in her honor on October 15, 1981, which was proclaimed Ophelia Settle Egypt Day in Washington, D.C. The Ophelia Egypt Center served D.C. residents until its closure in 2014. In 2023, Egypt’s legacy continues through the Ophelia Egypt Training Room at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.’s Carol Whitehill Moses Center.