Category Archives: Silver Spring

Observations on things where I live and work: Silver Spring, Maryland.

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

 

 

 

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 →

The Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial

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Several Silver Spring, Maryland, neighborhoods are planning a huge celebration to mark the Talbot Avenue Bridge’s centennial. Slated for demolition in 2019, the bridge is a significant civil rights landmark. The free September 22 event is open to the public and it will include musical performances by the Washington Revels Jubilee Voices and local Silver Spring musicians, drumming, artwork, the Talbot Avenue Bridge Pop-Up Museum, food and much more.

For more information about the bridge and the event and to volunteer or donate to help defray the costs for performers and equipment, please visit the Talbot Avenue Bridge Centennial website.

 

Time to hang it up Silver Spring Historical Society

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The identities of Blair’s slaves will never be known — Jerry McCoy, In Search of the Lost Souls of Silver Spring (February 2018).

If only the Silver Spring Historical Society had made even the most rudimentary effort to go beyond Ancestry.com and digitized Washington newspapers in its search for people enslaved by Silver Spring founder Francis Preston Blair, they might have been able to learn about Albert, Abraham, Vincent, Henry, Emily, Sarah, Nancy, Olivia, Mary, and Phillis (who married Samuel Lytton, founder of Lyttonsville, in 1859).  The group’s 2018 “Black History Month” posts in a local blog are yet another glaring example of erasure, one of many by the 20-year-old organization.

Maryland State Archives. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS (Assessment Record, Slaves) C1112, 1853-1864.

 

How a bridge closing underscores need for local journalism

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Yesterday evening, the Purple Line Transit Partners and Montgomery County’s Department of Transportation closed the Lyttonsville Place Bridge. The six-month closure will allow for the demolition and reconstruction of a new bridge to accommodate the Purple Line light rail.

Though local news outlets have covered the controversial bridge closing for the past several months, not a single journalist has written about Lyttonsville residents’ claims that the bridge closure and a detour using a street closed during urban renewal in the 1970s is environmental racism.  And, no journalists have covered the community’s search for a civil rights lawyer to take up their claim that the detour and bridge closing violate the National Environmental Policy Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by introducing impacts to the community that should have been evaluated under the law’s environmental justice requirements. Continue reading →

Environmental racism along the Purple Line

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Not a single length of track has yet been laid for Maryland’s new suburban light rail line, the Purple Line, yet there already are complaints of environmental racism coming from the historically African American Lyttonsville community. Though much of the environmental/social justice and equity concerns about the Purple Line have focused on displacement once the line opens, virtually no attention has been focused on the externalities communities like Lyttonsville are bearing during the construction phase.

Over the past few weeks, the entity selected to build the Purple Line (Purple Line Transit Partners), the Maryland Transit Administration, and the Montgomery County Department of Transportation have been trying to figure out how to mitigate the impacts of closing the Lyttonsville Place Bridge, a structure spanning the new Purple Line corridor (an abandoned former B&O industrial railroad line) connecting Brookville Road and the Lyttonsville community. Lyttonsville has been partially isolated since April 2017 when the Montgomery County DOT declared the historic Talbot Avenue Bridge unsafe and closed it. If the Lyttonsville Place Bridge is closed (for up to six months, according  to transportation officials), that will leave Lyttonsville residents and emergency responders with limited options for entering and leaving the community.

The Past is Prologue

Denise Watkins, facilitator, opens the April 3, 2018 Purple Line community meeting.

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Silver Spring’s history is racially biased. Let’s fix it.

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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 →

What’s next with Montgomery Preservation’s historic railroad station?

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A moat? A Trumpian wall?

Montgomery Preservation Inc. building, Silver Spring, Maryland, as seen from the entrance to Progress Place.

Montgomery Preservation Inc. doesn’t exactly have the best reputation in the Washington region as a good neighbor. The suburban historic preservation organization has vigorously opposed the completion of a regional bike trail; not questioned the presence of a fence blocking access to its property from a historic railroad bridge; and, has increasingly developed an adversarial relationship with a new county homeless facility that opened next door to the organization’s headquarters: a historic former B&O railroad station. Continue reading →