A guest post by commenter Jefe:
Anacostia refers to a section of Washington, D.C. It also refers to the largest tributary of the Potomac River. The Anacostia district is the part of DC east of the Anacostia River. It is just west of Prince George’s County, Maryland.
The original inhabitants of Anacostia were the Nacochtank, a Native American tribe that spoke an Algonquian language. John Smith first met them in 1608 and they remained until about 1668. This tribe is now extinct.
The site selected in 1791 for Washington, D.C. was centered just below the fall line of the Potomac River, which could accommodate oceangoing vessels. Both the states of Maryland and Virginia donated a portion of their territory to form the 10 mile (16 km) square District of Colombia. It included the colonial towns of Georgetown and Alexandria (Alexandria was later returned to Virginia). The original street plan of Washington was situated in between Georgetown and the Anacostia River. Until the mid 1800s the Anacostia district remained mostly rural.
Bridges built across the Anacostia River in the 1800s were mostly small and temporary. The first settled area east of the Anacostia was called Uniontown in 1854. Although restrictive covenants prevented non-white persons from renting or purchasing property in Uniontown, abolitionist Frederick Douglass purchased an estate there after the Civil War.
Development took off after the Anacostia Bridge was open in 1907, which could accommodate streetcars. The bridge was expanded in 1965 and 1970 to link the Anacostia Freeway to the Southeast Freeway and renamed the 11th Street Bridge. The bridge also connected to Nichols Avenue, later renamed to Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue.
Washington’s population exploded during the Great Depression and World War II, increasing nearly 70% between 1930 and 1950, spurring more growth in Anacostia. Over 85 % of the residents were of European descent until the early 1960s, when it was still a thriving community with cinemas, retail stores and restaurants.
Following blockbusting, white flight and the riots of 1968, the black population exceeded 85% by 1970 and 95% by the 1980s, when the area became famous for its poverty, crack dens, homicides and disastrous public schools. Washington led the nation’s homicide rate in the 1980s and 1990s, approaching 1 murder each year for every thousand residents. The highest concentration was in Anacostia, where murder was the leading cause of death among working-age males.
As the neighborhood grew poorer and more violent, businesses fled the area. Remaining businesses consist mainly of hair salons, liquor stores, check cashing operators, convenience stores and fast food eateries, many of which are owned and operated by Korean and Chinese immigrants. Some businesses have installed bulletproof windows around the service counter. Despite occupying nearly one-third the area of the nation’s capital, the 3rd top tourist destination in the USA, there are no hotels in Anacostia.
The Smithsonian’s Anacostia Museum is located there, which showcases the history and culture of African Americans.
Anacostia is represented by Ward 8 councilman ex-mayor Marion Barry, Jr. who is extremely popular among the constituents of the ward.
A 19.5 ft (6 m) tall public artwork once billed as “the World’s Largest Chair” has survived intact since 1959.
See also:
- black ghetto
- white flight
- Washington, DC
- Marion Barry
- Pointers on going to see Washington, DC
- Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum – there are free daily buses connecting the National Mall with the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum.
jefe…Thank you for this post. Anacostia is so-o-o very close to my heart; it is where I began “my becoming.”
D.C. was the first big city I’d ever experienced after graduating from my Alabama HBU in 1978. Good and bad — my young, “Geechie” (as my fellow ‘Degans called anybody from the South, though I’m actually a Gullah Girl from SC vs GA) self learned there was a great, big ole world out there, outside the confines of my Sea Island-influenced upbringing — and the “Chocolate City” was my proving ground.
I was there when Mayor Marion Barry got busted; I was there when the Metro Green Line was new; I was there in Ft. Dupont Park on Minnesota Ave., SE listening to the young, Evelyn Champagne King — for free!; I was living there, when I worked at the Washington Journalism Center on Virginia Ave., NW (no longer exists) in the aftermath of “Watergate,” where we held our one-week, conferences for journalists at the Watergate Hotel diagonally across the way every month; I was living there when I was wooed away from the Journalism Center, to work at the Watergate Hotel’s front desk in reservations, by “Wanda,” (and a substantial increase in salary), a dynamic Sister who was my point of contact for our conferences (we don’t look out for each other like that much anymore) and whose sister was married to Sugar Ray Leonard (the magnanimously generous, and down-to-earth Pearl Bailey had an apartment there and she treated me like kinfolk); I was living there when I became exposed to the “global society” in a way I never would have been had I stayed in the South.
From 27th St., SE, to Marlboro Pike right over the District line and then to Brooks Drive — the beginnings of the woman I’ve become, was born right there in the neighborhood about which you wrote. And you know what? I never experienced, nor felt afraid of crime, nor did I ever feel disrespected, ever — despite the statistics expressed by your, “poverty, crack dens, homicides and disastrous public schools.”
And after all these years, I’ve still not been able to get DC out of my system. Since I got married, I returned to live in the outskirts in Upper Marlboro for four years and from 2008-2009, I lived in NE in Ward 7 (where, in the shadow of the Capitol, homeless folk try to survive – http://lets-be-clear.blogspot.com/2009/04/homeless-advocate-thy-name-is-eric.html) while I went to G’town, working on my Masters in Journalism. I took a leave of absence the second year when I realized they weren’t really interested, as journalists, in telling the damned truth — haven’t been back, though I’m still registered as a student. U Street’s, “Busboys and Poets” was my hangout back then.
And yeah, the folks in Ward 8 did elect Barry to represent them — despite the hookers and coke of yore. And yes, he definitely is a member of the Black Mis-leadership Class. But given all the gentrification which hardly bodes well for their continued existence where most of them were born and raised, I get their fear, their reaching out for something, SOMEONE, with which they feel familiar.
Abagond, I truly apologize for taking up so much space, but jefe touched a nerve that runs through my very being, or in in Alice Walker’s words, “The Temple of My Familiar.”
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Deb, I spent my early childhood in Anacostia in the 1960s. I remember going to the Anacostia Library to attend their storytelling sessions for young kids. I have read that they still do that now. We used to hang out at the traditional style McDonalds on Good Hope Road and I remember when actual department stores, banks and cinemas could be found on Good Hope Road and Nichols (ie, MLK, Jr. ) Avenue. My family moved just across the line into PG county and later to a house just outside the Beltway.
I still look at Anacostia as my “home” neighborhood.
It was years later when my mother explained to me what happened to our apartment building. First of all, she had to lie to the rental agents in order to get a unit in the first place. Then they “forced” all the non-black residents to leave at once and replaced the entire building with black residents within 1-2 years. By the 1980s, my old apartment building had turned into a crack den. PG County was certainly no bowl of cherries in the early 70s either — my family had to face extended racial violence there.
I did move back into DC (Adams Morgan) in the mid-late 80s when Marion Barry was mayor. I was mugged and beaten unconscious as I was trying to move in there.
Washington DC was the first US city to have a black majority in the 1950s. In the 1970s, when it was 70-75% as a whole (and 95-98% black in Anacostia), it was renamed “Chocolate City”. But since the late 1980s, a process of gentrification has taken over. By 2011, DC’s black population dropped down to 50% again. Today, it is technically no longer majority black. PG county has taken its place which Marion Barry affectionately calls “Ward 9”. 😛
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Why do I have to have a username and password to “like” this ?
*Clicking the “like” button*…
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@ jefe…“First of all, she had to lie to the rental agents in order to get a unit in the first place. Then they “forced” all the non-black residents to leave at once and replaced the entire building with black residents within 1-2 years.”
Why did she have to lie? Since nothing happens in a vacuum, the ubiquitous “they” seem to be the people with whom everybody should be concerned.
As I said, I wasn’t born there, but my time there was pivotal in my “becoming” and I will be forever grateful for the lessons I learned. I followed my boyfriend from college there to get married. He turned out to be nothing like the guy from college when I got there. So I struck out on my own and did well (by SC standards for sure).
The only “drugs” I knew about, or saw folk involved in, was weed. Never saw a crack house, nor knew any crack heads (that I knew of anyway) and never saw any beat-downs (sorry you did). Isn’t Adams Morgan a trendy, upscale neighborhood now? Seems I remember my landlord, when I lived in NE lived there.
“PG County was certainly no bowl of cherries in the early 70s either — my family had to face extended racial violence there.”
Hell, there are parts of PG County that still aren’t a bowl of cherries today — though it was, when I was living there in the early 2000s at least, “the place to be” for up and coming Black folk with their huge McMansions and mega-churches and all (I worked with quite a few of them at Giant’s corporate office in Landover for a while).
“But since the late 1980s, a process of gentrification has taken over. By 2011, DC’s black population dropped down to 50% again. Today, it is technically no longer majority black. PG county has taken its place which Marion Barry affectionately calls “Ward 9″
Yeah it has, just like most of the urban areas across the country (like my hometown in SC, which itself, had a Black majority for a very long time after slavery’s end). Marion Barry’s “Ward 9” was merely Mr. & Mrs. Jack Johnson’s piggy bank — until their asses got caught and were sent to jail. Stashing cash in her underwear and flushing bribery checks down the toilet, really?? So much for the “Talented Tenth” of W.E.B. Dubois (though I appreciate some of his writing, his ideology wreaks of colonialism, IMHO)!
Thanks so very much for the trip down memory lane! 🙂
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@Deb
Landlords did not rent to interracial couples back then (even though it was legal in DC at the time). Every single unit that they showed up to look at, even though there were told on the phone that they had several units available for rent just one hour earlier were mysteriously completely filled when they arrived. The ONLY way they got an apartment was by my mother renting the apartment by herself and having her husband / my father move in later. The same thing was repeated again when they moved into PG county (where, technically, their marriage was still illegal).
The rental management agency in Anacostia nearly doubled the rent after doing some insignificant “renovation” (ie, replacing the entrance hall light fixture) and got all the non-black tenants to vacate. Then they lowered the rent back down and rented only to black tenants. I think the whole process only took a few months.
The first (garden apartment) neighborhood in PG was all white at first. But then “they” (the forces that be) devised a way to convert it to a majority black neighborhood as well.
Adams Morgan just started its gentrification process in the mid-80s, and is now pretty much gentrified. It no longer has the original bohemian and Latino flavour that it had 25-30 years ago. But even today, it is one of the districts with one of the highest rate of muggings, much higher than Anacostia.
It seems like you moved to PG after it became identified with the black middle class.
My family later moved outside the Beltway into (what was then) an all white neighborhood in PG. In the first few months neighbors dumped trash in the yard, burned fires in the yard, threw rocks and broke the front windows. They stole items off the property including the carburetor from the car. The kids chased us and threw objects at us when we went outside. One day, we came home to several large flags planted in the front yard saying, “Japs, go home” “Get out of our neighborhood”. Indeed, it was about a half a year of terror. One day, my mother went to all of the houses on the street and knocked on the doors and told all of them, “Sorry, we are not moving. You can steal stuff from us and try to destroy our property. But we are not moving”. After several months, the incidents died down. A couple years later PG county schools were subject to mandatory desegregation by busing. All hell broke loose again.
Today, that neighborhood is over 80% black.
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Abagond
This reminds me some of my old neighbourhoods like Elizabeth, Camden and Trenton NJ.
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Whites are taking back Harlem, it will not be long before hipsters set their eyes on Anacostia.
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@jefe…“Landlords did not rent to interracial couples back then (even though it was legal in DC at the time).”
Oh, okay. Yeah, Loving v. Virginia didn’t pass til the late 60s I think. Again, appreciate the history.
“It seems like you moved to PG after it became identified with the black middle class.”
I guess. It was in the early 2000s that I lived there most recently. We bought the house from an old white couple so I suppose they were remnants of the all-white neighborhood you’re talking bout.
It just seems to me, there’s never been (nor does it seem like there will ever be), a time in this country when all human beings will treat one another with dignity and respect because of the constantly ingrained, “American Exceptionalism” game of “them that’s got, shall have, them that’s not shall lose.” Mainly, because it’s set up that way — based on the construct of race. And because of that, any attempt at self-determination or cultural preservation becomes either an “us” against “them,” battle royal, or some kind of faux, “survival of the fittest” takeover.
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@Deb
I think topics like “Loving v. Virginia” or “Anti-miscegenation laws” and “Prince George’s County” will need separate posts. Maybe I will do it. 😛
Those old white couples bought their houses in the 60s & 70s when they were young and the neighborhood was all white. Abagond discussed in other posts about how the only white people left in a black neighborhood after white flight are the old people with grown children & who bought their houses many decades earlier.
Anacostia faced the similar thing about 20-30 years earlier than PG county, but as much of the housing there were rental properties, it happened much faster.
It doesn’t have to be just black neighborhoods either. You saw the similar phenomenon in Clint Eastwood’s Gran Turino.
@eshowoman
There are signs it will happen. But, I think it will first happen only in the original historic district. The H st. Playhouse theater is moving to Anacostia. There are building a new streetcar to run down Minnesota Ave. to connect the Green Line and Blue/Orange line metro lines.
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I had a friend who equated when whites come back to bleaching. It was happening to the West side of Chicago close to downtown in 2000’s gentrification as it is normally called.
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A jefe…“I think topics like “Loving v. Virginia” or “Anti-miscegenation laws” and “Prince George’s County” will need separate posts. Maybe I will do it. I’d definitely read them both! It’d be interesting to hear your take on the first, and see how you flesh out the second.
“Abagond discussed in other posts about how the only white people left in a black neighborhood after white flight are the old people with grown children & who bought their houses many decades earlier.”
I missed that one, but you’re both right. The old couple we bought from in PG, were the last whites left on our block and their house was paid for. The same thing happened when my parents bought our “movin’ on up” house when I was in the 6th grade in SC. There was only one other Black family when we moved in, but that ignited the white flight and by the time I was in the 8th or 9th grade, their was only one or two white families left on the block!
@ King…“bleaching” — thanks for that term! I’m surely going to use it in the upcoming post (with attribution of course!) I’m working on — “Can you ever go home again?” I recently got back from SC and there’s a whole lotta “bleaching”/gentrification going on, both in the neighborhood downtown where I was born and partially raised, as well as the second one into which we moved and from which I graduated high school.
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i am a 4th generation washingtonian and anacostia area was my hangout area. i loved the interation on this post between deb and jefe
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@ Tammy…No more than I have Sister, I promise you! Just like in real life when you meet folk who, as James Baldwin said, “know from whence you came,” so it is, in the blogosphere — and it feels really good to know that it still exists out there!
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I did a first draft of a PG county post, but it is already almost 1000 words long. Maybe it should be split into two with a chronological split around 1990, when it became majority African-American. Or maybe we could share — I do it pre-1990, you could something like PG county: the last 20 years.
If it is a place close to your heart, it is easy to write about it.
For me, it is a place close to my heart, but not a place I was very happy about. It still brings unhappy memories and feelings to me. I felt compelled to leave.
But, both my parents are buried or cremated there. My father and his parents are buried in north PG. My mother is cremated and put in a cemetery in south PG. So, my connection there will be forever.
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@eshowoman
Whites took back Capitol Hill, Southwest, Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant. Logan Circle and are taking back Shaw, Columbia Heights, Petworth and the H street corridor NE and maybe also Brookland near Catholic U. Anacostia and the rest of the area east of the Anacostia river are still decades behind. It is not like whites taking back Harlem, but taking back Bed-Stuy.
I was so surprised when I saw Logan Circle, Shaw and 14th street, as well as Ga. Ave. again. Those places were destroyed in the 1968 riots and were a no-man’s land for 35 years.
Shaw was the cultural heart of the greater Washington African-American community. As that becomes gentrified, maybe the cultural influence of Shaw will spread to Anacostia.
In New York, where is the cultural influence of Harlem moving to after Harlem becomes gentrified?
I would like to see the streetcar come back to Anacostia, linking the SE sides and NE sides together.
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Areas like Harlem and these parts of D.C. may very well end up like the black communities out west. San Francisco blacks are almost gone less than 5% and Oakland the home of the panthers is going the same way. If, it is not the sky high rents it is the inflated property taxes or predatory loans that is decimating the population out west. If, you want to see the future I say look out west….
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A recent post in the Economist talks about the DC’s subculture in the 1960s-80s. It mentions “America’s Murder Capital” and Marion Barry. If you hurry, you can catch the exhibit at the Corcoran gallery.
Right smack on top of the blog post is a pic of Anacostia on Good Hope Road.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/02/remembering-underground-washington-dc
“Pump Me Up: D.C. Subculture of the 1980s” is at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, until April 7th
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@Bulanik,
I have drafted a guest post about the transformation of the business mix after white flight. When I get it done, I’ll send it in.
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My mother went to Anancostia High School when there were still white kids there (the late 60’s).
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Another thing: Southeast in general is quite beautiful. It’s hilly and very green adn relatively open – not the dense concrete jungle environment you see in many hoods in most other big East Coast cities. I grew up in Philly, but my mother’s side is laregly in DC. As a kid in the 80’s, I veiwed Southeast as a Shangri-La because of teh relative absence of blight and really old housing stock that I was used to in Philly.
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I guess by southeast, you mean the area east of the Anacostia, not the Capitol Hill side.
Much of Southeast is green and rolling hills. The area of Hillcrest still has well-kept houses and lawns, as well as some areas along Minn. Ave. east of Penn. Ave (both in Ward 7). But areas near the historic Anacostic district and esp. the area below Congress Heights (eg, Washington Highlands) are just as blighted as any place you’ll find in the USA (in Ward 8)
The District is wealthier than all of the other 50 states, yet has the 2nd highest poverty rate (trailing only Mississippi).
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Just found a whole webseries named after this district
http://www.youtube.com/user/ANACOSTIASERIES
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At least one real estate agency is promoting this side of the river.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APi5JB5mEjg)
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@jefe…“I did a first draft of a PG county post, but it is already almost 1000 words long. Maybe it should be split into two with a chronological split around 1990, when it became majority African-American. Or maybe we could share — I do it pre-1990, you could something like PG county: the last 20 years.
If it is a place close to your heart, it is easy to write about it.”
Hey Man! Wasn’t blowing you off or anything (the comment above was for me, right?), just been “on the road again” taking care of some stuff in Florida and then back home again trying to figure out if it is, or even can be where I want to move in a few months. King of trouble’s “bleaching” observation, along with dealing with a major family-induced set-back at home, has me in a weird, limbo kind of state right now.
As for writing about PG County after it became majority Black, I doubt I could give you even 500 words! Though I lived there (it was cheaper than buying in the District!), I didn’t spend a lot of time getting to know it. I’m not really a McMansion kind of girl and that was the vibe I got from the folk living there. I spent a lot of time divided between DC, or, Baltimore; or Columbia, MD where a good friend lived; or on the road heading South to go home; or heading North to NY where the in-laws live.
Thanks for the links on Anacostia (a “webseries?” Really?). I feel the same not warm and fuzzy way about its “progress” as I do about my hometown’s. Guess it’s cuz I’m old and set in my ways — or somethin’… 🙂
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Found a good update article about this topic
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/17435/will-economic-renewal-reach-anacostia-in-2013/
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Anacostia after Marion Barry?
Well, the first plan is to build a park over the old 11th street bridge connecting Capitol Hill to Anacostia continuing to the Frederick Douglass Historic site.
Today’s New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/us/building-a-park-to-span-a-divide-in-washington-anacostia-river.html
The fear – the Anacostia River front has some of the best vistas in the city. Will it gentrify the area so much that the residents will be forced to leave (either to lower southeast or to Prince George’s County)?
I remember in my early childhood, when the SW freeway was built across SW DC. It displaced the (mostly black) residents, encouraging landlords to blockbust Anacostia. Now they can do it with gentrification.
Building a Park to Span a Divide in Washington
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