Just Up The Pike | History Sidebar

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.

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.