Monthly Archives: September 2018

An interview with Silver Spring blogger Dan Reed

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Credit: Just Up The Pike Facebook profile picture.

More than a year before Dan Reed invited people to join him at local establishments to “ask [him] (almost) anything,” I sat down with the urbanism blogger and real estate agent to talk about Silver Spring history and a Washington urban legend known as “The Plan.” Reed has written prolifically on a wide range of Silver Spring topics for his blog, Just Up The Pike, the Greater Greater Washington blog, and Washingtonian magazine. I was interested in his epistemic background as it relates to how Silver Spring produces history and how Silver Spring uses history in placemaking and community-building efforts.

I spoke with Reed that day for my research on suburban erasure that is part of a book project about a suburban Atlanta city; Silver Spring and Washington are sources for comparative material. For the past five years. I have been asking interviewees some variant of this question: Where can I go to find Black history sites in your community? The interview with Reed was no different:

ROTENSTEIN: Where would you go in Silver Spring to see African American history?

REED: In downtown Silver Spring?

ROTENSTEIN: Yes.

REED: [Pause]  I mean I guess – I would recommend Lyttonsville, which is not downtown; it’s next to it.

ROTENSTEIN: Very specific about downtown?

REED: [Pause] I’ll be honest, I can’t think of anything. I can think of barbershops. That’s the first thing that came to mind. There are a lot of black barbershops. I still go to the same barber that I went to when I was seven in downtown. His name is TJ. He used to be at Community Barbers on Georgia Avenue but now he’s in Petworth in D.C. Which reminds me, I need to make an appointment.

But that is an element of black culture that you can find here.

I hope you’re going to tell me there’s some piece of black history that I can go out and find this afternoon in downtown Silver Spring?

The reason for publishing the interview at this time, in its entirety, derives from something that happened this past June. Reed, in a series of tweets, alleged that he had been invited and subsequently uninvited as a speaker at a local African American history themed event. A woman working on the event’s planning committee had searched Google for potential speakers and she found Reed’s name because of his frequent public appearances and writing about Silver Spring.

The woman called Reed and spoke with him about the event and about the possibility of speaking. The committee on which she was serving had established that all invitations to speak at the event would be determined by a committee consensus, not by one individual. After speaking with Reed, the woman called me and asked if I knew Reed. I answered affirmatively and then I explained why I believed he might not be a good choice as a speaker. I described the 2016 interview that I did with Reed as well as things that he had written about Lyttonsvillle and his positions on such topics as the Purple Line — all information the woman did not know. She then called Reed again and told him that he may not be a candidate to speak.

And then the tweeting began.

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Racial restrictive covenants renounced at celebration

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I began describing Silver Spring, Maryland, as a “sundown suburb” two years ago in articles and in public talks. My research has identified more than 50 residential subdivisions covering about 10 square miles next to Washington, D.C. that had racially restrictive covenants attached to them between c. 1904 and 1948. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1948 that the covenants were unenforceable in the courts, whites used other tools to keep their communities free from African Americans (and Jews): steering, redlining, gentlemen’s agreements, club memberships, etc.

North Woodside is part of the historic Silver Spring sundown suburb. In the early 20th century subdivisions filled in the former farmland east of the B&O Railroad tracks and the Talbot Avenue Bridge. Like many of its counterparts, early landowners attached racially restrictive covenants to their properties prohibiting African Americans from living there — unless they were domestic servants.

David Cox wipes away tears during an emotional statement renouncing his neighborhood’s use of racially restrictive deed covenants.

At the Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial celebration September 22, 2018, a remarkable thing happened. David Cox, the current president of the North Woodside-Montgomery Hills Civic Association made an emotional statement renouncing the anti-Black racism that kept his neighborhood all-white for much of the twentieth century. Cox affirmed North Woodside’s new bonds with the community “on the other side of the tracks,” Lyttonsville, Cox read a resolution unanimously approved by his neighborhood association’s board of directors.

Racially restrictive covenant included in a deed for the sale of a lot in Silver Spring’s North Woodside neighborhood, November 16, 1923.

After reading a racially restrictive covenant attached to a North Woodside deed in 1923, he said, “it is evidence that at one time, people in my neighborhood were interested in keeping it white.” Cox became emotional and as he regained his composure, he said, “My wife says I cry at McDonald’s commercials.He also acknowledged that the practice wasn’t limited to his neighborhood and that it was common throughout Silver Spring. “The tracks between our neighborhood and Lyttonsville were a dividing line between black and white spaces. Racially restrictive deed covenants enabled and perpetuated racial segregation and even after these restrictions were outlawed, the social dynamics caused by such patterns continued.”

Lyttonsville’s Charlotte Coffield (front) and North Woodside’s Anna White.

North Woodside neighbors worked closely with Lyttonsville residents and others to plan and produce the Talbot Avenue Bridge celebration. “Over time, of course, neighborhood change,” Cox said. “And we think North Woodside has changed for the better. I believe our community is a welcoming place.” He added

Over the past several years, our civic association has worked in collaboration with the civic associations of Lyttonsville and Rosemary Hills on issues associated with the bridge … we have advocated together at meetings. I hope we have started to build a level of trust. We want that spirit of trust and connection to continue and desire that it should extend beyond the work we are already doing on these issues to encompass social gatherings such as this centennial celebration.

 

Thank you David Cox and the people of North Woodside for taking this historic step.

Read the complete resolution here:

© 2018 D.S. Rotenstein

 

 

 

The River Road Moses Cemetery’s Lazarus act

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Thank you for sharing your report. It illustrates how exhaustive and extensive your research has been. For me, the connection to both the River Road community and thereby the cemetery has brought about an investigation of sorts into how I am, who I am. — Geneva Nanette Hunter, September 2018

Over the past week I have emailed and delivered copies of the research that I conducted into the history and historical significance of the River Road Moses Cemetery. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the River Road Moses Cemetery is the final resting place for several hundred formerly enslaved and free people of African descent.

River Road Moses Cemetery site, Bethesda, Maryland.

The work initially was requested by the leadership of Macedonia Baptist Church and its activism partners operating as the “Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition.” At some point in August 2018, the church and its activism partners decided to pursue alternative research strategies in their efforts to preserve the site. Curiously, this so-called coalition never informed me about its decision. After almost a year of documentary research and oral history interviews, I completed the report and transmitted it to members of the descendant community, the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office, and the Montgomery County Planning Department’s Historic Preservation Office.

The research traces the cemetery’s history and the history of the Montgomery County, Maryland, African American hamlet where it relocated in 1911 from Northwest Washington, D.C. Founded in 1880 by a local subordinate order of a national African American benevolent organization, gentrification and anti-Black land use policies displaced the Washington graveyard and ultimately the entire community where it was established. Half a century later, the same forces erased the River Road community.

The D.C.-Md. Black Borderlands.

Because much of the story takes place in what are now Washington’s Chevy Chase and Tenleytown neighborhoods, there is a substantial amount of research on African American suburbs (planned and unplanned communities) that emerged in these spaces starting in the early 19th century. Collectively, these communities in Washington and Maryland comprise an area I am calling the “DC-MD Black Borderlands.” I introduced this concept earlier this year in a talk hosted by the D.C. Public Library and I will be presenting it in a paper at this year’s D.C. History Conference.

A “lost” 19th century Washington African American cemetery was one of several unanticipated discoveries. The cemetery’s location has now been mapped by the District’s Historic Preservation Office. “Your research adds needed data to the available information on this community,” wrote District Archaeologist Ruth Trocolli.

1899 letter to the proprietors of the Hebbons Cemetery. Courtesy of the District of Columbia Office of the Surveyor.

In addition to the descendant community, I also provided copies of the report to three Bethesda historians whose work first documented the cemetery and the River Road community after Montgomery County embarked on rewriting the sector plan where they are located. I cannot thank them enough, along with the descendant community, and the many archivists in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia who assisted me in this research.

Want to read the report the report? Click the link below:

© 2018 D.S. Rotenstein

 

100 candles: Silver Spring is throwing a birthday party for a bridge

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Three Silver Spring neighborhoods are teaming up to throw a birthday party for a bridge Saturday September 22. The Talbot Avenue Bridge turns 100 this year and it is slated for demolition next year to make way for a new structure over the Purple Line. For most of its history, the bridge was a vital link connecting historically Black Lyttonsville with Silver Spring and Washington.

Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial celebration being promoted on two “jumbotron” screens in downtown Silver Spring the week before the event.

The celebration at the bridge over the CSX Railroad tracks near Rosemary Hills Elementary School features musical performances by the Washington Revels Jubilee Voices and singer-songwriter Lea. Speakers from all three neighborhoods will talk about their experiences living there. There will be a student art show, African drumming, a libation ceremony, and pies and other sweets contributed by neighbors. County Executive Isiah Leggett will be there to present a proclamation declaring it Talbot Avenue Bridge Day. Continue reading →