Last week, the Silver Spring Historical Society (Silver Spring, Maryland) invited its Facebook audience to share stories about a donut shop. The society (which really isn’t a society; it’s four boomer building huggers) is short on history and steeped in nostalgia that celebrates the white supremacists who “built” Silver Spring and erases Black history. This post accepts the historical society’s request for “specific memories” of the site.
This is the third of three posts featuring short video segments produced over the summer for AmeriCorps. The first two covered Silver Spring’s Tastee Diner and Crivella’s Wayside Inn.
This clip features a site in Silver Spring where the community’s Jim Crow history was erased. The “Silver Spring Memory Wall” is a five-mural installation next to Acorn Park. It is the product of historic preservation and planning decisions made in the 1990s to tell Silver Spring’s history through public art.
Those murals present a nostalgic view of Silver Spring history that glosses over its decades as a sundown suburb. It also intentionally sought to ameliorate the absence of Blacks from public places in the twentieth century by replacing white people with African Americans in a depiction of Silver Spring’s train station in the 1940s.
Silver Spring Memory Wall, B&O Railroad Station mural.
Former Washington, D.C., muralist Mame Cohalan (who died in 2020) recognized that the historic photos she was using were missing Black people. She asked her Montgomery County clients for permission to add some diversity — Black people — into the artwork. The resulting mural erased Silver Spring’s Jim Crow history by inserting Black people into a place and time where they otherwise never would have been found.
1994 Montgomery County Planning Department memo asking permission to add more “cultural diversity” to Memory Wall murals.
This clip tells the Acorn Park and Silver Spring Memory Wall story.
Post 3 of 3
© 2021 D.S. Rotenstein
In August I got an email from an AmeriCorps Project Change leader asking me to contribute to an upcoming training tour of Silver Spring, Maryland, for new volunteers. The project director and I spoke for about an hour and I agreed to produce three short videos about historic places in Silver Spring where history has been whitewashed.
The September 2, 2021, day-long tour wound through sites on both sides of the D.C.-Maryland line and it included stops at the Tastee Diner, the former Crivella’s Wayside Inn, and Acorn Park.
The clip focusing on the Tastee Diner contrasts the nostalgia-laden histories and historic preservation efforts that omit the popular eatery’s Jim Crow past.
Post 1 of 3
© 2021 D.S. Rotenstein
In 2017 I was deep in oral history interviews with residents of Lyttonsville, a historically Black community in Silver Spring, Maryland. I had just organized a public event meant to draw attention to murals that erase the Black experience and uplift the stories of white supremacy.
Protesting Invisibility, Acorn Urban Park, Silver Spring, Maryland, June 2017.
Protesting Invisibility, Acorn Urban Park, Silver Spring, Maryland, June 2017.
Shortly after the event in Acorn Urban Park, a lifelong Lyttonsville resident mentioned a photo collage she saw in a Silver Spring bank branch. She asked if I had seen it and I replied that I had not. I asked her to describe it for me.
The woman explained that it showed Black folks in Silver Spring who “never existed” in her community. She said that like the murals in Acorn Park, it creates a false sense of history by placing Black people in spaces in a time when and where they never would have existed. I asked her what was so troubling about the image. She replied,
It could be [bank] is making a statement about American history in a special way. However, it is strange to have a beautiful photo there in the midst of Silver Spring’s history. When I went to the bank and saw it, I was shocked, but so pleased because most photos of my people are not shown in the public.
Bank photo collage, photographed in 2017.
After our initial conversation, I went to the bank to photograph the collage. After seeing it for myself, I then exchanged emails with the Lyttonsville resident who brought it to my attention:
I wish I knew who the people were because it looks like a photo from the early 1900’s. I don’t know that the photo in that day was color. I have seen photos of our race like this, but always black and white. My grandmother and grandfather would have dressed like this. So, it is authentic, but I don’t know who they are or where they are from.
Dressing up has always been very important to African Americans, until the 60’s. Even when they were enslaved, a head covering for women was very important. Should they have escaped to freedom, they were going to dress. The hats in this photo are authentic and so is the pose. This had to be a church portrait or something important connected to “family.”
There is a fine line between appropriation and celebration. Nostalgia runs deep in Silver Spring and in many communities. It’s tempting to exploit nostalgia to connect national brands with the communities where their branches are located. But what are the impacts of haphazardly selecting images and throwing them together in a visually appealing presentation that has no connection to reality or to the people in the community?
The Silver Spring Historical Society frequently posts about nostalgia-laden murals in the community.
There are 53 public art installations in Silver Spring, Maryland. Only two depict historical figures. One is a mural showing President Harry Truman during a visit to the suburban community. The other is a bronze bust of Norman Lane. Earlier this week, during protests stemming from Minneapolis resident George Floyd’s murder by police, vandals twice defaced the Norman Lane “monument.”
Just Up The Pike, Facebook, June 2020.
Lots of folks know who Harry Truman was. But Norman Lane?
Lane (1911-1987) was an indigent who wandered throughout downtown Silver Spring for much of the 20th century. He was affectionately dubbed the “Mayor of Silver Spring.” In 1991 a local artist dedicated a bronze bust depicting Lane in an alley dubbed the “Mayor’s Promenade” near 8221 Georgia Avenue.
Norman Lane bust, 2017.
Lane was a well-known figure and stories of his exploits are part of Silver Spring’s oral tradition. He was able to walk into many Silver Spring restaurants, get a seat, and eat compliments of the establishment. These same places declined to serve African Americans. Or, if they did, required African Americans to go to back doors for take-out service.
The Norman Lane bust was one of 19 stops along the Silver Spring Black History tours that I gave between 2016 and 2018. I intentionally included Lane’s monument to underscore how effectively Silver Spring has whitewashed its history. While the community celebrates the memory of a colorful character in downtown art and commemorative spaces, there are no similar artworks and spaces dedicated to the community’s notable people of color (African Americans) who contributed to Silver Spring’s history.
Roscoe Nix. Source: Montgomery County Volunteer Center.
At the Norman Lane site, I talked about Roscoe Nix (1911-2012), the Alabama native and World War II veteran who worked in the U.S. departments of Labor and Justice. Nix frequently is credited with being a pioneer in Montgomery County civil rights history.
Nix served on the Maryland Human Rights Commission as its executive secretary in the 1960s; he was the first African American elected to the Montgomery County School Board (1974); and, he was the Montgomery County NAACP chapter president from 1980 to 1990.
Roscoe Nix Elementary School, 2017.
Though Montgomery County named an elementary school (several miles outside of downtown Silver Spring) for Nix in 2006, there are no monuments, markers, etc. commemorating the events in 1962 that launched Nix’s civil rights career. Nix’s contributions are invisible and the site where he cut his civil rights activism was demolished more than a decade ago.
In early 1962, shortly after Montgomery County enacted a public accommodations law, Nix and several of his white and African American coworkers went to a local restaurant in downtown Silver Spring for lunch. Nix was one of more than 600 Department of Labor employees whose offices had moved to Silver Spring the year before.
Silver Spring at the time was a “sundown suburb” and about 150 to 200 African Americans were among the agency employees relocated to Silver Spring in October 1961.
The Washington Post, October 17, 1961.
The Washington Post in October 1961 noted,
Silver Spring has a very small Negro population and a recent study by the Montgomery County Human Relations Commission showed that some eating establishments will accept Negro patronage and some will not.
The same Post article noted,
While a few of the Negro employes [sic.] are on the professional level a majority hold clerical jobs.
That 1961 move set the stage for civil rights actions over the next five years that helped remove many of the remaining Jim Crow barriers in downtown Silver Spring.
Between April and August 1962, at least four episodes of racial discrimination were documented at Crivella’s Wayside Inn on East-West Highway. Roscoe Nix was the first to file a complaint filed under the county’s public accommodation law.
Baltimore Afro-American, May 5, 1962.
The restaurant was the site of several sit-ins and street demonstrations in 1962. Over the next four years, additional complaints and litigation were filed against Crivella’s alleging
Chicago Defender, February 18, 1963.
civil rights violations. The demonstrations were widely covered by Black and white newspapers and they attracted such notables as Washington-based Julius Hobson, a leader in the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
Roscoe Nix’s activism got it all started.
Meanwhile, as Nix was trying to get a meal in one of Silver Spring’s restaurants, Lane was able to get seated in most establishments he entered and he was served — the food was complimentary. In segregated Silver Spring, most businesses wouldn’t take Roscoe Nix’s money and he was unwelcome in their establishments. Lane, who had no money, found comfort and nourishment throughout the community.
A Silver Spring alley was renamed to commemorate Norman Lane’s life.
I can only speculate at this point why Norman Lane’s monument is being vandalized during this period of protest and unrest over white supremacy. I hope it’s because some folks in Silver Spring recognize the irony in the community’s commemoration of a homeless white man instead of a Black civil rights leader.
Slide from “Silver Spring: A Sundown Suburb in the Capital Beltway” by David Rotenstein.
© 2020 D.S. Rotenstein
Tastee Diner, Silver Spring, Maryland.
It’s well known that the most exclusive restaurants have special menus with items reserved for well-heeled and well-connected patrons. These special people dine on dishes carefully prepared by chefs not line cooks. During its earliest years in business, the Tastee Diner had its own special menu of sorts. Not only that, the Silver Spring, Maryland, eatery also had a special cover charge. Entry and seating were free for white folks; the admission price for people of color was astronomically high: it was the color of their skin.
The Silver Spring Historical Society celebrates the Tastee Diner in its books, blog posts, walking tours, and other public programs. The group talks about the community’s nostalgia for the diner and how Silver Spring mobilized to “save” and move the diner when downtown redevelopment threatened it nearly 20 years ago.
Earlier this week the Silver Spring Historical Society posted on its facebook page, “A local high school student will be utilizing SSHS’s collection of materials about Tastee Diner for a school project.”
Silver Spring Historical Society Facebook page screen capture, October 12, 2018.
I wonder if the historical society will tell the high school student about the diner’s special menu, the one with prices that people of color could never pay. I wonder if this exercise in nostalgia economics will include scholarship by historians who have explored Tastee Diner’s special menu, the one that historian Andrew Hurley wrote about in 2002:
Segregated service was by no means exclusive to diners located in the Deep South. Luncheonettes, coffee shops, and diners in the Middle Atlantic and midwestern states resorted to many of the same practices that prevailed in the old Confederacy. Eddie Warner, for instance, ran a chain of diners in suburban Maryland on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. Warner instructed his employees to notify black patrons that they could not be served inside the diner, but that take-out service was available. Warner made no exception for the African-American cooks and dishwashers he hired periodically. Company policy dictated that they take their meals alone in the back kitchen. Hurley, Andrew. Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in the Postwar Consumer Culture. New York: Basic Books, 2002, pp. 88-89.
Today’s Tastee Diner clientele looks nothing like its Jim Crow-era predecessors. The restaurant is a popular eatery and meeting place for people of all races and cultural backgrounds — mostly. A decade ago, the Tastee Diner faced and overcame allegations that it discriminated against LGBTQ diners. The discriminatory practices leading to episodes between 2009 and 2011 appear to have been abandoned and mostly forgotten. Yet, when I did Black History tours in downtown Silver Spring, people who recalled them made sure that I mentioned them as we met across from the restaurant.
So who is making sure that Montgomery County students using the Silver Spring Historical Society as an educational resource are getting real history, not fake whitewashed history? How are parents and educators to know whether the history lessons about menus and economies at the historic eatery will include the hidden charges not published in the historic menus.
© 2018 D.S. Rotenstein
If I were mounting an exhibition to tell the story about Montgomery County, Maryland, in the 1950s, there would be lots of material from which to choose: the Cold War, suburbanization, and civil rights would certainly be in the mix. But how would I choose to tell the story about the Black experience in Montgomery County during that eventful decade?
One place I wouldn’t look for inspiration is the Montgomery County Historical Society’s exhibit, BOOM: The 1950s in Montgomery County. My latest article in The Activist History Review tackles the exhibit’s deficiencies.
There are many stories about African American entrepreneurialism, education, consumer choice, housing, religious life, and sports that would be solid candidates for some sort of exhibit featuring artifacts, texts, and photographs. How would I select the most compelling stories to tell? Continue reading
Panel discusses “Silver Spring: Story of an American Suburb,” September 2017. Left to right, Jerry McCoy (Silver Spring Historical Society), Walter Gottlieb (filmmaker), and Todd Hitchcock (AFI Silver Program Director).
For the past six years I have taken a deep dive into how communities produce history and historic preservation. Silver Spring, Maryland, and Decatur, Georgia, are inner ring suburbs with similar development histories and comparable historiographies. In both places, like many others throughout North America, white (oftentimes male) histories and historic places are preserved and narrate while people of color are omitted or marginalized.
I have written about both places here and in history and planning publications. My community’s history is racist. How can I correct it? recently was published in the National Council on Public History’s History@Work blog.. The article recounts my community’s efforts to reframe how history and historic preservation are produced to create a more accurate and inclusive record. Continue reading
Two maps of Silver Spring, Maryland, published 80 years apart provide a palpable and accessible example of erasure.
Top: 1933 North Washington Realty Company map of “North Washington”; Bottom: Historic Neighborhoods of Downtown Silver Spring. The dotted line shows the approximate location of the historic African American hamlet, Lyttonsville.
The first map was published in 1933 by the North Washington Realty Company. It shows all of the area the company and community boosters were branding as “Maryland North of Washington.” The promotional map showed the existing street network, community institutions (schools, churches, commercial buildings), and neighborhood names, including areas shaded where the company had investments and plans for new residential subdivisions. Continue reading
There are three Silver Springs. There’s the mica-flecked spring where Francis Preston Blair established an antebellum farm in rural Maryland north of the District of Columbia.
The Silver Spring site. A reconstructed 19th-century acorn-shaped gazebo is in the background.
Then there’s the early 20th century place created by real estate entrepreneurs and community boosters with visions of creating an all-white middle-class Washington suburb. Continue reading