While researching African American communities in Montgomery County, Maryland, I visited several historic Black cemeteries and photographed the cultural landscapes and grave markers. This slideshow is a sample from that research.
© 2020 D.S. Rotenstein
Bethesda Beat screen capture.
A new report commissioned by the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is getting a lot of buzz. The report was prepared after Montgomery County Council President Nancy Navarro read one of my articles and called for the name to be changed at E. Brooke Lee Middle School. Why? Because Lee was the political boss and real estate speculator behind creating the Silver Spring sundown suburb. The current discussion about Montgomery County’s school names all stems from my 2017 article yet despite many calls and emails from parents, educators, and student journalists since its publication, not a single MCPS official has contacted me.
Among the gems in the new report:
Perhaps the most astonishing thing in the entire report was the recommendation that Silver Spring’s Frank L. Hewitt Sr. was a candidate to have a school named in his honor. According to a table appended to the narrative report, Hewitt was an “industrious and gifted businessman” whose contributions to social equity included collaborating with S. Brooke Lee:
Pushed for residence [sic.] locating in Silver Spring, finding places where people can live in the city. Along with E. Brooke Lee, important in the development of Silver Spring, MD’s modern residential infrastructure.
Yes, Hewitt was industrious. Like Lee, he was a prolific real estate speculator and community builder. He did indeed help found the Silver Spring Armory [segregated] and the Silver Spring National Bank [did not lend to African Americans, as my information to date shows]. As for the many individual house lots and residential subdivisions he sold, Hewitt, like Lee, attached noxious racially restrictive covenants. Here’s an example from a 1908 deed to a lot in R. Holt Easley’s subdivision prohibiting people of African descent from owning or renting it:
And here’s another one, this time executed in 1923:
Yep, let’s scrub E. Brooke Lee’s name and his Blair kin from the facades of Montgomery County’s schools and replace them with “industrious and gifted businessmen” like Frank L. Hewitt.
UPDATE: Read a more substantive review that I provided to several DC area reporters.
© 2019 D.S. Rotenstein
River Road Moses Cemetery site, Bethesda, Maryland.
The results of research into the history of Bethesda, Maryland’s River Road Moses Cemetery are presented in this report first released to the dispersed descendant community and government agencies in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Now that all of the known stakeholders have a copy of the report, I am releasing it to the general public.
Some key findings presented in the report and deriving from the research:
When I transmitted the report to the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission, the agency that owns most of the site, I offered recommendations for pursuing historic preservation and for working with the descendant community. Continue reading
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
Ever since the Washington Post published my op-ed on Confederate monument removal last March, I have gotten quite a few calls and emails from Montgomery County residents about schools named for enslavers and white supremacists. The key passage in my 2017 op-ed reads,
But ditching a century-old memorial — celebrating a period long past, built by people long dead — doesn’t address other, more subtle markers of white supremacy, including the county’s legacy of segregated housing in residential subdivisions and apartment communities …
… One such example is Silver Spring’s E. Brooke Lee Middle School. Established in 1966, the school is named for Col. Edward Brooke Lee (1892-1984), a former Maryland secretary of state and a founder of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. Lee was Lincoln confidant Francis Preston Blair’s great-grandson and the scion of a regional political dynasty. History books and academic articles uniformly describe him as the father of modern Silver Spring … As late as 1967, the septuagenarian was calling on residents to reject what he described as “Anti-White laws” that he perceived as a threat to the suburbs he built. “Desegregation is not the answer,” Lee wrote that spring…
Last month I was interviewed twice about Montgomery County’s school names, once by an area magazine reporter and the other time by the editor of the Watkins Mill High School newspaper. The high school student sent me a list of questions and he asked me to respond. His article was published today in the Gaithersburg school’s online paper, The Current.
Much of my interview didn’t make it into the final version. But, some curious comments about post-bellum white supremacists did, notably that their names were not included in the final list of schools that the student believes is problematic. About Montgomery Blair, the student wrote, “Montgomery Blair was not included in this article because there is evidence that Blair, despite growing up in a slave-owning family, never owned slaves himself.” One friend of mine on Facebook wrote about this slippery approach, “I love how Blair escaped the list.”
Reprinted below is the complete list of questions the student sent, along with my answers (in bold).
1. Do you think the county had knowledge of the history of these people before naming a high school after them?
Yes, I do believe that the County was aware that a number of prominent early citizens were enslavers. Add to that the people who came later who also were fervent white supremacists, like E. Brooke Lee (there is a middle school named for him).
2. Do you think that these names are a result of the time period when the schools were named?
Partly, yes. But I also believe that Montgomery County like other places throughout the nation has not fully sought the truth about our history nor have we sought ways to reconcile with a past that includes slavery and Jim Crow.
3. Why do you think the schools were named after people instead of the area in which they reside?
I can’t speak to the specific schools as to why they were named. But, there is a long history in the United States of naming public buildings after prominent white men.
4. Do you think that there was any significance in the choice to name Richard Montgomery High School after a slaveowner to distinguish it as a high school that, at the time, was separate from the “colored” Rockville high school?
Again, I can’t speak to the specifics because I have not researched school names in Montgomery County and the deliberations that went into them. For most of the 20th century, Montgomery County had two school systems: one for whites and the other for African Americans. To the best of my knowledge, none of the African American schools were named for people, e.g., African American community leaders. Instead, they typically were named for the community in which they were located (e.g., Takoma Park Colored School, River Road Colored School, etc.).
5.When the names were chosen do you think people would have realized this fact? And if they did, do you think they would have cared?
For most of Montgomery County’s history, it was a rigidly segregated and mainly agricultural county. The county was ruled by democratic political bosses who fought hard to keep schools, housing, and public places segregated. Because of the county’s culture, until the Cold War, any efforts to seek equity in public spaces would have been resisted. In 1948, for example, a group of more than 1,000 African American residents formed the Citizens Council for Mutual improvement and they petitioned county leaders to improve African American schools, provide water and sewer services to African American communities, and pave streets in those communities. They also asked that the Jim Crow signs be taken down in Rockville. Their requests went unanswered.
6. The current student body at Magruder is 55.6 percent minority. If the student body realized that their high school was named after a slaveowner, what kind of effect do you think it would have?
I think the conversation about the school’s namesake is an important one to have. Changing it is one option; another is adding educational information for students and the community about the school’s namesake. That is a decision that must be made by students and the community that the school serves. The status quo, though, is not preferable since it continues to celebrate an individual and a society that enslaved people and that created conditions for subsequent generations of poverty, discrimination, and diminished opportunities for many Montgomery County residents. As a Montgomery County resident, I see nothing worth celebrating among people who enslaved others. See my answer to no. 7 for more.
7. In your opinion, do you think that it is appropriate for these educational institutions to be named after former slave owners?
Perhaps. We can’t erase history but we can learn from it. For example, what did the enslavers do after the Civil War and during Reconstruction? Did they sell land to formerly enslaved people and enable them to build wealth as neighbors or did they cling to white supremacy and deny formerly enslaved people their civil rights? Many Montgomery County enslavers did the latter. In fact, the Blair family after the Civil War and as Reconstruction was starting bolted from Lincoln’s Republican Party back to the Democratic Party and they not only continued to embrace white supremacy and segregation but they also became active in the colonization movement which sought to relocate formerly enslaved people to Africa or the Caribbean and South America. There is nothing honorable worth celebrating among those people.
RALLY TO SAVE BETHESDA AFRICAN CEMETERY – SUNDAY, NOV 12TH -1:30PM
When: Sunday, November 12, 2017, 1:30—3:30 PM
Where: Macedonia Baptist Church, 5119 River Road, Bethesda, Maryland
For more information, visit the Save Bethesda African Cemetery page on Facebook.
Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission, Nov. 1, 2017.
Possible Purple Line substation house. MTA photo.
The Purple Line is a proposed 16-mile light rail corridor. Once completed, it will link suburban communities north of the nation’s capital in Maryland’s Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. First proposed more than a decade ago, state officials breathed new life into the project in 2007 to connect Metro transit stations in New Carrolton and Bethesda as well as the business districts between the two communities.
Planning for the project, including engineering and environmental studies, are underway. Construction could begin as early as 2015 if funding is secured.
Purple Line route. MTA map.
The Purple Line will require multiple support structures and buildings, including 18 power substations, 14 signal bungalows (small buildings with radio and signal equipment), and a nine-story ventilation tower in Bethesda’s central business district. Residents who live along the proposed alignment told the Washington Post that they are concerned about potential impacts from the power facilities known as traction power substations. Continue reading
A Maryland Realtor emailed to let me know that Silver Spring, Maryland’s 1939 World’s Fair Town of Tomorrow home is on the market. Built as a marketing gimmick and used as collateral advertising for the New York fair, the home has had only two owners since it was completed in the summer of 1939.
Construction progress photo. The Washington Post, June 11, 1939.
Yesterday the Montgomery County Planning Board held a session to evaluate whether it should forward a draft amendment to the Master Plan for Historic Preservation that would have designated the First Baptist Church of Silver Spring as historic.
By unanimous consensus, the Planning Board elected to not have a draft amendment prepared, effectively killing the proposal to designate the church. The Planning Board deferred to the 6-2 vote by the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission that the property met none of the nine legal criteria for designation.
I wrote briefly about the local preservationists who pursued the designation in an earlier post and I plan a follow-up post on the many issues raised by this case. In the meantime, the testimony I submitted to the Planning Board is reprinted below. The local newspaper, the Montgomery Gazette, reported on the Planning Board’s decision in a post published at its Web site overnight. Continue reading
Last week we had a little snow storm that created huge problems for the Washington metropolitan area. A downed power line sent flames and smoke into our yard as the wire remained draped on our wood fence 20 feet away from our house. Using landlines and cellphones, our neighborhood was unable to reach Montgomery County 911 to report the downed lines and fire. We subsequently spent 45 hours without power (and heat) and we were lucky.
