WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a strategic move to get closer to both the students it serves as well as the focal point for the nation’s education policy, United Negro College Fund President Michael Lomax formally announced plans Monday to relocate the organization in the heart of one the most historic Black neighborhoods in the nation’s capital.
“We been out in the suburbs way, way too long,” Lomax said at the historic Lincoln Theatre, where he shared the stage with D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, District Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, developers and a host of other key players in the approximately $150 million project known as Progression Place.
Lomax told the audience of hundreds that when UNCF moved from New York City to its current site in Fairfax, Va., 17 years ago, it was to position the organization closer to the “hub of the national education policy conversation.”
“Now, we are completing the journey, moving into the city itself,” Lomax said, “not only because it is, more than it was 17 years ago, where people come together to discuss and make educational policy, but because Washington, D.C., has become the country’s marquee site for education reform.
“We need to be where it is happening on the ground and we want to be part of making it happen.”
The new UNCF headquarters will be located in D.C.’s historic Shaw Neighborhood, not far from the one-time residence of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, founder of Negro History Week.
Specifically, it will be located on 7th St. between T and S streets in the Northwest quadrant of the city, just south of the Howard University campus, putting UNCF literally within eyesight of one of the many HBCUs whose students benefit from UNCF-administered scholarships.
