Shaw grew out of freed slave encampments in the rural outskirts of Washington City. It was named after Civil War Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Shaw thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the pre-Harlem center of African-Americanintellectual and cultural life. Howard Theological Seminary received its first matriculates in 1866; by 1925, Professor Alain Locke was advancing the idea of "The New Negro," and Langston Hughes was descending from Le Droit Park to hear the "sad songs" of 7th Street. The most famous Shaw native to emerge from this period—sometimes called the Black Renaissance of DC—was Duke Ellington.