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.
