The Washington Interracial Workshop, which affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1949, began in 1947 as a summer workshop sponsored by CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). The summer program attracted a dozen persons from the District of Columbia and other states throughout the United States. Local participants considered the Workshop so successful that they formed a separate, permanent organization dedicated to abolishing segregation in the nation's capital. Both this organization and the summer workshops, which CORE and FOR continued to sponsor every year, operated by the CORE principles of interracial membership, direct action, and non-violent tactics. Membership fluctuated between ten and twenty people.
Under the chairmanship of Lynn Seiter from 1947 to 1948, the Workshop picketed and leafleted patrons of segregated facilities at the Y.M.C.A., the Greyhound Bus Terminal, and public swimming pools in the nation's capital. When Don Coan took over the chairmanship in April 1949, the Workshop began a lengthy struggle to integrate D.C. movie theatres that only ended in April 1951; Coan also moved to make eating places and recreational facilities available to people of all races. In the spring of 1951 Albert Mindlin succeeded Coan and spearheaded efforts to integrate Washington's playgrounds. The Rosedale Playground campaign, which is the best documented in these papers, became a city-wide issue after a black child drowned while swimming in the playground pool after hours on June 22, 1952. The playground was not opened to blacks until October 28 of that year.
The Workshop gradually became inactive after 1953, and Mindlin became more absorbed in national CORE disputes. Following ineffective attempts to integrate the Metropolitan Police Boys Club, the Workshop disbanded on March 13, 1955. In the mid-1960's, the Washington CORE chapter was reactivated.
