Monthly Archives: January 2019

Suburban retrofitting=suburban renewal

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To the downtown business interests and their allies, the answer was clear. Well-to-do Americans would return to the center only if the slums and blighted areas were eliminated and replaced by safe, healthy, and attractive middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods. In other words, it would be necessary to raze and rebuild much of the central city …. This was a huge undertaking. To carry it out, the downtown business interests and their allies would have to join the slum clearance movement, which had emerged in the late 1920s and early 1930s as an alternative to tenement house reform.

— Fogelson, Robert M. Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, p. 319.

Now for giggles, replace “central city” with “suburb” and “slum clearance movement” with “suburban retrofitting.” Isn’t “suburban retrofitting” just another euphemism for the same processes embodied in urban renewal?

Mother Jones in Suburban Maryland: Folklore and History

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Photograph shows labor activist Mother Jones in New York City, 1915. Library of Congress photo.

Thanks to the Internet and an endless stream of on-this-day (#OTD) social media posts, ordinary people are never far from history. Such is the case of my friend Glyn Robbins, a UK social justice activist and scholar immersed in housing and labor history and practice. Glyn recently read a post commemorating the anniversary of the death of 20th century labor activist Marry Harris “Mother” Jones (1830-1930).

Mother Jones emigrated to Canada from her native Ireland as a child. As an adult she worked as a schoolteacher and seamstress in Michigan and Chicago. In 1861, Harris married an ironworker and union member George Jones. In the 1870s, she began attending labor meetings and she became increasingly vocal.

Over the next several decades, Mother Jones traveled widely speaking on behalf of workers and supporting their demands for fair wages, hours, and working conditions. For more on Mother Jones, visit the Mother Jones Museum website for a curated collection of links and stories about her life,

“I didn’t know she was buried near you,” he wrote to me on Facebook. “I was told by local labor movement folk that Mother Jones is buried near Silver Spring.” He included a link to an Irish news article titled, “Remembering Irish-born Mary Harris ‘Mother’ Jones on the anniversary of her death.”

Naturally, I got a little curious. I knew that she had spent her last years in the Washington, D.C., area. But, my familiarity with the Mother Jones story didn’t go too deeply into her personal life. My friend’s message got me to thinking: If Mother Jones did die in Silver Spring, where is the site? Was she really buried here? A warm late fall day and some spare time after doing research at the Library of Congress gave me the cover I need to pursue a little extra-curricular research. Continue reading →

2018 in review, anticipating 2019

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The past year was a consequential one for me personally and professionally. Here are a few highlights from 2018 and some things that I am looking forward to in 2019.

The Talbot Avenue Bridge pop-up museum, April 21, 2018. L-R: Harvey Matthews, David Rotenstein, Rev. Ella Redfield. Photo by Charlotte Coffield.

2018 Is In The Books

  • My chapter on confronting erasure in Silver Spring’s history and historic preservation was published the volume, Demand the Impossible: Essays in History as Activism, edited by Nathan Wuertenberg and William Horne, 89–111.
  • I spoke about erasure and history at the University of Maryland (African American Studies program) and at several Silver Spring churches.
  • I was a speaker in the We Are Takoma series (Takoma, Park, Md.) and my topic was the Silver Spring Sundown Suburb.
  • The District of Columbia’s Tenley-Friendship Library branch invited me to speak about African American communities that had developed in and around Tenleytown and Chevy Chase.
  • I presented several conference papers: The Delta Symposium (Jonesboro, Ark.), The Vernacular Architecture Forum (Alexandria, Va.), the American Folklore Society (Buffalo, NY), and the DC History Conference.
  • I curated the Talbot Avenue Bridge pop-up museum in April.
  • I helped plan the Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial Celebration.
  • My article on erasure and historic preservation in Decatur, Georgia, was accepted for publication in a special issue of the Journal of American Folklore dedicated to historic preservation.
  • I wrote blog posts for the Activist History Review, New Directions in Folklore, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
  • I completed a one-year project documenting Bethesda’s River Road Moses Cemetery and presented the results to the descendant community and to government agencies in Montgomery County and the District of Columbia.
  • My article, “Erasing and Reclaiming History: A Delta Photo Essay,” was published in Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies.
  • I completed archival research projects for clients in Georgia, Montgomery County, Washington, and Wisconsin.
  • I was invited to be on a master’s thesis committee for Goucher University historic preservation student.
  • Finally, I finished four years of comparative data research for my book on erasure and displacement in Decatur, Georgia. This research on how Silver Spring produces history and historic preservation led to the Talbot Avenue Bridge work and to the programs on erasure and the Silver Spring Sundown Suburb done as part of the Invisible Montgomery project.

Big Plans for 2019

  • The year begins with two articles out for review in academic journals. They both deal with erasure and racialized history and historic preservation.
  • I will be revisiting my work on leather and meatpacking in Pennsylvania, including work on two encyclopedia articles and another article on Pittsburgh’s leather industry.
  • I will be hunkering down and finishing the Decatur book.
  • After being out of the academe for nearly a decade I will be hitting the bricks looking for some adjunct teaching gigs.
  • I will be doing more fieldwork in the Mississippi River Delta region.
  • I am working with colleagues planning the 2019 American Folklore Society meeting in Baltimore.

Happy New Year and best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2019.

— David