[3] The American Negro Academy (ANA), the first major African-American learned society in the United States, was formed by the Rev.

The church distributed clothes and food to people in the neighborhood during the riots that followed the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.

He served as president of the Housing Development Corporation and supported full home-rule status for the District of Columbia.

[7] Because of the church's long significance in the District of Columbia, it has been listed as a site on the city's African-American Heritage Trail.

It sponsored Saturday evening concerts with performances by the National Symphony and the Gay Men's Chorus, but concert-goers failed to return for Sunday services the next morning.

[4] Revised regulations that extended on-street parking restrictions to Sundays were also cited for the decline in church attendance.

[4] The present church building was designed by Howard Wright Cutler in the Italian Romanesque Revival style.