A new show about a community facing gentrification offers a cautionary tale

This black-and-white photo of Fourth Street in Southwest Washington, D.C., in 1949

might shock the wealthy residents who live there now. It shows the commercial district of a vibrant African-American community, with barbershops, department stores, and candy stores. It was a prosperous, working-class neighborhood where mostly black and some Jewish residents lived, worshiped, played, and attended school. Rows of brick and frame houses line the streets of this self-sufficient, close-knit community, nestled among rivers and canals. But its proximity to the National Mall and the seat of federal government power made it the focus of growing sentiment in the 1940s and 1950s about the need for urban renewal. KDSP “The Southwest is ground zero in many ways,” explains Samir Meghelli, curator of the exhibition “Rights to the City,” currently on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum. "We really started with federal urban renewal policies, and the idea was that a lot of urban centers were seen as blighted. These neighborhoods were not just African-American, working-class neighborhoods, but Southwest Washington, D.C., was also the first city to become urban One of the communities targeted for renewal.

The exhibition draws on photos, videos, artifacts and nearly 200 oral histories to take visitors back to a seminal moment in the area's history as residents navigated it. Efforts to protect communities and control rapid transformation driven by development. The issues raised here are causing a stir beyond Washington, D.C.

"The title of this exhibition is an attempt to touch on the nature of the problem. At the core, this is do people have a right to access the city, or do they have a right to access the resources of the city," Meghelli explained. "Do people have equal access to the opportunities that the city provides? The important global context is that for the first time in human history, more than half of the population lives in cities, and cities are growing at an unprecedented rate.

1949 black-and-white photo of Fourth Street in Southwest Washington, D.C., a vibrant African-American community thriving with barbershops, department stores and candy stores. (Joseph Curtis Photography Collection, Washington, D.C. Public Library)

One of the oldest communities in the District of Columbia, Southwest is located south of the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall, so politicians Thinking this was a great opportunity to try a policy of mass demolition and 'ghetto clearance,'" Meghelli said. There's a 1958 photo of President Dwight D. Eisenhower with developer William Zuckerberg Sr. William Zeckendorf reviews Southwest District's urban renewal program with John Remon and a 1959 photo of the rubble of destroyed buildings southwest of 11th Street and Virginia Avenue in the background. Washington Monument. A large synagogue, called the Talmud Torah, was built nearby in 1900. It was demolished in 1959, and some small business owners sued as rescuers demolished the complex. required to remain on their property. However, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case of Berman v. Parker affirmed the right of the *** to seize private property for public use as long as just compensation is provided. Today, this The ruling is still used in high-profile cases, including a 2005 case in New London, Connecticut, which went to the Supreme Court and by the early 1970s more than 23,000 people had been displaced, as well as more than 1,800 businesses. National figures such as author James Baldwin described urban renewal as "black displacement." In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and developer William Zeckendorf Sr. ***Reviewed Southwest District's Urban Renewal Plan with John Remon (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum)

Many people displaced from the Southwest ended up here. Anacostia, on the east side of the Anacostia River, is the home of Muscovites. Curator Meghelli said the exhibit tells the history of a now rapidly gentrifying area with a narrative of racial segregation, Segregation, segregation.

When Anacostia was founded in the mid-19th century, it was established as a white community with restrictive covenants that meant only whites could buy homes there. "On top of that," Meghelli said, "you have an African-American community called the historic Barry Farm Hillsdale, so you have these two segregated communities, one for whites and one for Blacks lived side by side.

But a movement to desegregate the region's deeply unequal schools and public spaces led to the historic Brown v. 1954. Brown v. Board of Education desegregated schools in the country, but the case did not apply to the District of Columbia.

But a Panion lawsuit, Bolling v. Sharpe, involving the new whites-only John Philip Sousa Junior High School in Anacostia, ultimately led to the desegregation of the district's schools. Photos in the exhibit illustrate the *** campaign against integrating Anacostia schools, including images that bear a striking resemblance to Little Rock, Arkansas. Washington Monument Towers, these towers are the ruins of a building destroyed in 1959 at 11th Street and Virginia Avenue Southwest. (Garnet W. Jex "Reconstruction of the Southwest" Slide Collection, Washington, D.C. Historical Society)

You can see on the front of the stroller, the mother placed a sign here that said "We must Did they go to school together?" "So, I don't think people realize that this is what happened in Washington, D.C.," Meghelli said. "School desegregation is part of what's beginning to change communities like Anacostia."

People in other parts of the district, including the historic Shaw neighborhood, home to the famous Along U Street's Black Broadway, they looked at what was happening to the Southwest and decided to stop wholesale demolition and displacement. "Right to the City" chronicles the priest's battle. Walter Fort Roy founded the Model City Community Organization (MICCO) in 1966, an organization dedicated to ensuring that residents and small business owners help lead the city planning process in a manner that serves their interests.

"MICCO hired Black architects and Black construction engineers. It really built a strong collective, not just of planning professionals but just residents and small business owners, who started planning to update their communities ," Meghelli said, adding that one of the stories the exhibit tells is about the construction of the Lincoln Westmoreland Apartments at Seventh and R Streets NW. Michigan Tech partnered with the African-American Shaw Temple and the predominantly white Westmoreland Church in Bethesda, Maryland, to build affordable housing following the 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The first building built later, it still stands today, despite the rapid changes that have taken place in the neighborhood. Your browser does not support video tags. It is one of the few affordable housing options. Many affordable housing units in a rapidly growing middle-class neighborhood are the result of this organization (MICCO). It's a powerful story about how a community is responding to what's happening in the Southwest," explained Meghelli, an advocacy group for One DC that continues to advocate for Shaw and others in the region to fight for racial and economic justice, said Dominic Molden, a longtime resource organizer who started working in Washington in 1986. But preserving the history and culture of working-class African Americans in communities like Shaw takes a few steps, he said. Something needs to happen, Shaw now has a rooftop dog park and beer garden

“A DC and our solidarity partners need to continue a strong commitment to building the grassroots infrastructure around Hussein. "G and land. As the title of the exhibition says, we need to fight for the rights of the city, which is to say, we should do everything we can to ensure that no black people, no large black families, no Latino immigrants." Don't because they are lower-tier or center line, they had the right to come into the city and were removed," said Muldoon, Ed. Walter Ford Roy (right), founder of the Model City Neighborhood Organization, with architect Herbert MacDonald and 9 Cedric Carter, a young boy who reviewed the reconstruction plan in 1969, said, Including building strong tenants' associations and strong citizens' associations that will fight for the people living in Shaw, he added, adding that "the people" need to take back public *** land and control public *** facilities and ensure that any public * **Subsidized development included housing for low-income and working-class people, Muldoon said, as the war in Shaw in the 1960s and Dr. King's speech in Shaw in 1967 continued to work to help ordinary people in an increasingly expensive city. And there are good lessons for people surviving across the country and around the world

"I think they believe we have more power than we have, that we have more to win than we have, Because we do more than other cities. But the bar is too low, and we want to raise it," Muldoon said. "So look at the two or three parcels of land and buildings we help people buy, why can't we help more people buy and control their entire community?

He was referring to the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury, Boston, a community-based organization that uses visibility fields—a tool often used by developers—to Dig up the community and rebuild a blighted area with affordable housing, parks, gardens and new businesses. Muldoon believes a similar approach could be used in the region, along with more political education so people will be more aware of the housing crisis many communities face. He also believes those organizing to save homes and businesses from displacement should be suspicious of developers offering gifts and promises to move people back into their homes once their homes are demolished.

"You should always be suspicious when you see private developers or *** in most cases, even influential people talking about equitable development," Muldoon said . "They're not talking about leaving black and working-class people where they are. They're not talking about letting those people sit at the table and make decisions. They're neglecting those communities so they can build them for other people. By Walter and Rowe The Ontario Lakers Youth Organization, founded in 1964 by the Nader Pierce brothers, won control of a vacant lot and turned it into a public park with community gardens and improvements to support sports teams (*** public*. **Library Star Collection) He said a Washington, D.C., fight is continuing in Shaw and Anacostia, where the organization "put up a flag" on the first building it owned, Muldoon emphasized. Similar fights are being fought around the world, from Brazil's landless movement to London's battle for affordable housing, and community organizer Mary Nashiken says the fight for equity is happening slightly differently than in other neighborhoods in the city. In the 1950s, parents and teachers at two once-segregated elementary schools, John Quincy Adams and Thomas P. Morgan, tried to promote integration there by creating an organization, the Adams-Morgan Better Neighborhood Conference. Trying to build a sense of unity between a neighborhood that has huge disparities between rich and poor, and trying to control improvements there without mass displacement of its lower-tier residents

"What's happening in the Southwest is**. * What's really initiated, what's happening at Shaw now is closer to what I saw at Adams Morgan, which is that Lager you're happening in the private market," Nahikian explained. "What's happening at Adams Morgan, it's not obvious The racial divide, because we are really racially diverse, the group that comes together at Adams Morgan is also economically diverse.

She said this meant even people who lived in expensive homes in the Karolama Triangle understood that what happened on Columbia Road affected their lives. There was mass displacement of blacks, whites, and Latinos in the 1970s, but with the help of the Adams Morgan Organization (AMO), the people there won some huge battles over housing and tenant rights. Nahikian remembers getting a frantic phone call about the situation on Seton Street in the mid-1970s.

"You better get down right now," Nahikian, who was working with AMO at the time, recalled the voice on the phone saying. "Everyone got eviction notices!" ''

'' '" A 2015 *** event in Washington's Chinatown supported affordable housing, particularly in the Museum Square development, where residents Home to nearly 150 Chinese-American residents. Anacostia Community Museum Archives (Photo by Susana Raab) “KDSP” More than 20 people are about to lose their property to a developer, some of whom have lived there for decades, Nahikian said. There were multi-generational families and the neighborhood was full of children, so Amo challenged the eviction in court, saying at the time there was no provision for a tenant to buy.

"We eventually settled. , these families had the right to buy their houses at a fixed price," said Nasian, who recalled similar battles taking place elsewhere in the neighborhood. She also recounted a story of rolling a giant wooden box as a video played on the TV , a video by a young man named Ontario Lakers in an effort to convince Congress to fund the purchase of Walter Pierce Park, a Quaker and African-American cemetery where graves were discovered in the past few years. /p>

Not only was Adams Morgan’s Amobee a model for community advisory missions in the region, Nashiken said activist struggles there helped shape legislation, including the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) ). She said the first time advocates successfully implemented a tenants' right to buy was on Seaton Street, but last month the borough's city council amended the legislation to exempt single-family home tenants. Wait, this move angered Nahikian,

Haven't we learned anything? "Nahikian is amazing," said Nahikian.

"So, we're back in the exhibition' city 's right, but the regulatory framework package at Adams Morgan that we originally created in the District of Columbia has been around for 50 years and is available across the country.

But she worries that the drive for advocacy groups in the region to fight for equity, housing and renter rights has been lost at a time when these issues have become national issues.

“The scariest part to me is that the United States is the largest owner of low-income affordable housing in the world. If you look at the location of public housing across the country now, it is located on the most desirable land, and the pressure from private developers to take over is huge," Nahikian said.

Back to Southwest DC, Cranes are swaying as a number of developments continue, including The Quay, a high-end mix of residential, retail, office and hotel space, and Leafy Gardens, a long-standing public housing development nearby that some locals fear will be demolished. Low-income residents will no longer be able to afford to live in the neighborhood.

That's one thing he hopes people will think of when they see the exhibition, museum director Meghelli said, recalling the king's words in a 1967 George Bernard Shaw speech.

"Get ready,'" Meghelli said was King's refrain. "This is an important thread throughout the exhibition. Whether we are actively involved or not, we are actively involved in the changes that are happening in our city. We need to be involved in this process in order to shape the changes that are happening in our city as much as possible.

“Right to the City” is on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum, 1901 Fort Place, S.E., Washington D.C., through April 20, 2020.

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