John B. Duncan papers

In 1952, after twenty-eight years of service in city government, John Bonner Duncan (1910-1994) was appointed recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. He served in this capacity until 1961, at which time President John F. Kennedy appointed him the first African-American commissioner of the District of Columbia. President Lyndon B. Johnson re-appointed him to this position in 1964. As a member of the city's last three-man board of commissioners, in 1967 Duncan advocated for the reinstatement of the city's present mayor-commission system.

In November 1967, Duncan was appointed assistant to the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior for Urban Relations. He retired from the government in 1969 and began a twenty-year career as a consultant in housing development, equal opportunity and public affairs groups.

He was active in nearly eighty civic organizations in the District of Columbia for forty years, including private and public agencies, which supported education, health, recreation, welfare, youth groups, human relations art and sciences. He was a supporter of religious organizations, civil rights groups and numerous service organizations.

John B. Duncan was born in Springfield, Kentucky in 1910. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Howard University, and graduated from Terrell Law School in 1938. He was a member of the Maryland Bar and an associate member of the Washington Bar Association. He served as an attorney and senior attorney for several federal agencies. Duncan married Edith West in 1938. They had two children, John Jr. and Joan. After the death of his first wife in 1966, Duncan married B. Delores Berry in 1969. Duncan passed away at his home in Alexandria, Virginia in 1994.