Ever since Washington was carved from two slaveholding states in 1791, it has been a special place for black Americans. Lincoln freed the slaves in Washington about nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation, prompting blacks from the region to flock here. It was the birthplace of Duke Ellington and home to other artists like Zora Neale Hurston and Sterling Allen Brown, who later fueled the Harlem Renaissance. By 1957, blacks had become the majority of the city’s residents, exceeding numbers in any major city in the United States. Ever since Walter E. Washington was appointed mayor by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, the city has been led by black politicians and shaped by black institutions. This has fostered a sense of black privilege, swagger and, yes, the hubris that comes with leadership.

For the past half-century, the city’s black majority has also yielded a distinct culture. But in the midst of gentrification that is now fading fast. Last month, hundreds of mourners streamed into the Howard Theater to say goodbye to the late guitarist Chuck Brown, the godfather of go-go music, perhaps the city’s only indigenous art form. The music that Mr. Brown created was once ubiquitous here, but most newcomers today have never heard it.