“As a matter of fact, one can claim the greater Washington D.C. metropolitan area was the cradle for Black chess in America.” Local writer and two-time D.C. chess champion Gregory Kearse made that claim in a seminal 1998 article for Chess Life, which noted that the thriving local area chess scene in the 1960s helped develop the first officially rated African American chess masters — Walter Hill. Ken Clayton and Frank Street — and helped nurture a new generation of strong Black players such as William Morrison, Vincent Moore, Emory Tate and Baraka Shabazz.