Early Life and Family
Washington, the great-grandson of an American slave, was born in Dawson, Georgia and raised in Jamestown, New York. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from Howard University and his law degree from Howard University School of Law. He was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.
After graduating from Howard in 1948, Washington was hired as a supervisor for D.C.'s Alley Dwelling Authority. He worked for the authority until a 1961 appointment by John F. Kennedy as the Executive Director of the National Capital Housing Authority, the housing department of the then-Federally controlled District of Columbia. In 1966 he took the same position in the administration of New York City mayor John Lindsay.
His first wife, Bennetta Bullock, died in 1991. By this marriage he had one daughter, sociologist Bennetta Jules-Rosette. In 1994 he married Mary Burke.
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Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or family:
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“Women generally should be taught that the rough life men must needs lead, in order to be healthy, useful and manly men, would preclude the possibility of a great degree of physical perfection, especially in color. It is not a bad reflection to know that in all probability the human animal has endowments enough without aspiring to be the beauty of all creation as well as the ruler.”
—Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)
“You can read the best experts on child care. You can listen to those who have been there. You can take a whole childbirth and child-care course without missing a lesson. But you won’t really know a thing about yourselves and each other as parents, or your baby as a child, until you have her in your arms. That’s the moment when the lifelong process of bringing up a child into the fold of the family begins.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)