Tag Archives: Washington (DC)

From writing history’s first draft to making history

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Yesterday, we said goodbye to our friend Lillian Cooper Wiggins. The memorial was held at Arlington National Cemetery and the hall was filled to capacity with family and friends. I was honored and humbled to be among the many people Lil invited into her life and to be there to help celebrate that life.

Lil’s daughter asked me to draw on my many interviews with her mom to help write the obituaries published in The Washington Post and The Washington Informer. My words were unmistakable in the beautiful program Karen compiled to celebrate her mom’s life. I was fortunate to have so many of Lil’s own words to share in my tribute to her. Words like these: “My principle was to be the best I could to write as truthful as I could.” Good advice for a historian and writer.

Lil was a force of nature and one of the best people I have had the honor to know and befriend. She had a front row seat to history as Washington transformed from a Jim Crow Southern town into an iconic Chocolate City. As she transformed herself from a midwestern transplant into a centerpiece of Washington’s social, political, and economic life, Lil moved from that front seat onto center stage. Lil went from writing history’s first draft as an influential journalist to becoming part of history because of her writing and so much more.

Thank you Lil for everything.

One final dispatch “From the Desk of Lil”

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“From the Desk of Lil” was the column that Lillian Cooper Wiggins wrote for the Washington Afro-American newspaper.

Lillian Cooper Wiggins died October 26 at age 92. She was my friend and the inspiration for much of the work that I have done since 2011 when I began writing about gentrification and racism in Decatur, Ga. I’m a historian and I first met Lillian in the pages of a history book of sorts, Dream City, the landmark 1994 work by Washington, D.C., journalists Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. It’s a deep dive into the politics and culture of late-twentieth-century Washington wrapped around the story of Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry.

Dream City is required reading for anyone working and living in Washington. I first picked it up in 2007 while working as a consultant to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). I had been hired to do documentary research and dozens of oral history interviews to support author Tony Proscio in writing his book documenting the history of the DC LISC office.

Lillian Cooper Wiggins aboard Air Force 2 while covering Hubert Humphrey’s trip to Africa. Photo courtesy of Lillian Cooper Wiggins.

Jaffe and Sherwood introduced readers in Washington and beyond to Lillian’s best known contribution to Washington history. In the 1970s, she began writing about what has become widely known as “The Plan.” Jaffe later wrote, “We can thank Lillian Wiggins for first articulating this particular conspiracy theory [as a] columnist for the Washington Afro-American.” Jaffe got some things wrong in that 2010 Washington Examiner article, but the gist of his observation is correct: Lillian did expose many generations of journalists, historians, and sociologists to “The Plan.”

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Entertainment ecosystems and the Chitlin’ Circuit

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Pittsburgh’s Wylie Avenue and Washington’s U Street have lots of things in common. They both were Black entertainment hubs and African-American entrepreneurial economic engines in their respective cities’ Black strolls. Memphis author Preston Lauterbach eloquently described “the stroll” in his 2012 book, The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll:

Any place with a sizable [Black] population grew a darktown, and each of these [Black] districts centered on a main thoroughfare, a world unto itself. The maestro, in his hep vernacular, called it “the stroll” (p. 51).

But the stroll was only part of a complicated entertainment ecosystem that extended well beyond a city’s corporate limits. Black entertainment entrepreneurs opened satellite facilities in rural communities beyond the earliest suburbs. These places became popular roadhouses and juke joints in the Chitlin’ Circuit with complicated social and economic ties to their counterparts on the stroll.

Bohemian Caverns, U Street and 11th, Washington, D.C.

In 1931, after racial violence broke out at a new Pittsburgh pool, a pair of Hill District entrepreneurs found a partner in Washington, Pa., 30 miles to the south, to open a swimming resort catering to the region’s African Americans. Norris Beach as it was called became a popular Southwestern Pennsylvania stop in the Chitlin’ Circuit with touring national bands stopping to play during the summers that it operated.

The Pittsburgh Courier, May 26, 1934.

Read more about Norris Beach and its entrepreneurs in my new Pittsburgh Quarterly article, Norris Beach: “Swim Where You Will Be Welcomed.”

© 2021 D.S. Rotenstein

The mobster next door

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Silver Spring, Maryland, is one of several suburbs just across the District of Columbia state line where racketeers operating in the nation’s capital lived and had satellite operations. It is an unincorporated area that abuts Northwest Washington in a sprawling county that until the 1950s was mostly agricultural. Suburbanization attracted throngs of government workers moving to the District of Columbia as well as Washingtonians moving away from Blacks buying homes in previously segregated all-white neighborhoods. Sam Morgan was one of several District racketeers who ended up in the suburbs. This is his story. Continue reading →

A son of Moses in Pittsburgh’s North Side

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Introduction

Moses Order logo, c. 1887.

I first “met” Henry White in 2017 while researching a suburban Washington, D.C., cemetery. White was a founder and the namesake of White’s Tabernacle No. 39 of the Ancient United Order of Sons and Daughters, Brothers and Sisters of Moses. Henry (sometimes called “Harry” in historical records) was born c. 1847 in North Carolina. By the late 1870s, he was married and living in an African American hamlet in the District of Columbia established by free Blacks in the 1830s.

Henry White and his wife, Clara, had several children during their marriage. After Henry died, one of their children moved to Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. Henry White left no diaries or photographs and he died intestate. His traces in the historical record are slim, but compelling. While searching for information that would help me to understand Henry White and his time in Washington, I found a 1930s legal case in which his kin were named as defendants in litigation brought to clear the title to properties in the former hamlet where Henry and Clara raised their children. Among the briefs and depositions were papers filed by William Miles White, a resident of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He was the same “Miles White” who was just a few months old in June of 1870 when a census enumerator visited Henry and Clara White’s rented Tenallytown (Tenleytown) home.

I finished the cemetery research and its results were presented in a report submitted to the descendants of the people associated with the White’s Tabernacle cemetery and agencies in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. William Miles White and his life in Pennsylvania became an open question to follow up on later. Later arrived in 2019 when we moved back to Pittsburgh.

Like his parents, Miles White left few traces in the historical record. But also like his father, what evidence he did leave raises some intriguing questions about where he lived and how he fit into complicated racialized urban and suburban landscapes. This post is a step towards answering those questions. Continue reading →

The census and resistance

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In 1968, Congress held hearings on the violence that erupted after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s April assassination. Testimony by Rufus “Catfish” Mayfield exposed how fraught the U.S. Census is with regard to communities of color. Mayfield’s candid testimony about how some of Washington’s African American residents responded when the census taker knocked on the door is worth considering as the current U.S. President plays political games with the 2020 Census.

District of Columbia Chairman of the City Council John Hechinger recognized Mr. Rufus “Catfish” Mayfield, who was identified as a “District of Columbia citizen.” Mayfield’s statement began, “Thank you, members of the Council, brothers and sisters. Usually I don’t go with prepared speeches. They say I am an uncut diamond in the rough, but I am letting you know I am going to school and trying to sharpen up and attack things a little harder.”

Mayfield continued,

See, you have robbed the black male of his masculinity and his dignity. And until this is restored, the man has no alternative but to strike out. I tell you now, that you had better take another census on bow many black people are In the District of Columbia, because I know when I was growing up, I got tired of hiding in the bed when the census showed The way it goes now, when the census taker comes around they can have eight children and she is putting one in, the bed and putting another one -In the closet. And that census taker comes in there, “How many children you got?” two. I tell you there  are black people out there.

You know what a judge told me, he said, “Mayfield, this Is coming down to a civil war. But let me tell you something, you people can’t win’ because you don’t have the troops.” I tell you, take another count.

I think that we have to rid ourselves of the go-called classification of black people into categories. There is only one kind of black people, or there should be only one kind of a black person, and that is a proud black person. But the way It goes now, you are classified. It Is upper middle class, middle class, and the lower Negro. (Vol. 2, Rehabilitation of D.C. Areas Damaged by Civil Disorders.: Hearings before the United States Senate Committee on the District of Columbia,Subcommittee on Business and Commerce, Ninetieth Congress, Second Session on Apr. 18, 30, May 20, 28-29, 1968. Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 1968, p. 401)

 

 

Walt Whitman: 1850s house flipper and gentrifier

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Walt Whitman c. 1855. Photo from the Library of Congress.

One of Washington’s many adopted sons, Walt Whitman is among the most decorated figures in American literature. A lesser-known fact about Whitman is that he wrote one of the earliest descriptions of speculative real estate development, displacement, and gentrification.

Whitman’s essay, “Tear Down and Build Over Again,” was published in the November 1845 issue of The American Review. From the perspective of a housing supplier, he explored urban redevelopment, aesthetics, and the attachments to place longtime residents have.

What makes Whitman’s essay unique besides its early date is that it was written not by a housing reformer or displaced resident, but by an entrepreneur making money from the creative destruction of New York City neighborhoods.

“Let us level to the earth all the houses that were not built within the last ten years,” Whitman wrote in 1845. “Let us raise the devil and break things!” Continue reading →

Gentrification signs

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This morning the Washington Post published a story about a D.C. homeowner’s very individual approach to opposing change in his neighborhood. Milfred Ellis posted three anti-gentrification signs in his Brightwood home’s front yard.

Anti-gentrification signs in Washington yard. Photo by author.

Anti-gentrification signs in Washington yard. Photo by author.

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Post reporter Perry Stein is doing a solid job covering gentrification and other changes in Washington’s neighborhoods. I think her definition of gentrification is too broad, though: “gentrification is, by definition, wealthier residents displacing longtime poorer residents in neighborhoods.” There’s a compelling case for displacement and demographic change in Mr. Ellis’ neighborhood but there doesn’t appear to be a solid case for the disinvestment that’s essential to any rigorous definition of “gentrification.”

The signs in the Ellis yard are a great illustration of individual/neighborhood resistance to change that is being driven by the same forces that also underlie gentrification: real estate speculation. I think signs posted on utility poles near his home, though, tell the rest of the story:

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“We Buy Houses” sign above a bike route sign, Brightwood neighborhood, Washington, D.C.

© 2015 D.S. Rotenstein

 

Columbia Heights reborn

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The riots that tore through Washington, D.C., after Martin Luther King’s assassination in April 1968 left many neighborhoods physically and emotionally scarred for decades. Columbia Heights was one of the most adversely affected. Continue reading →

Civil War Lost and Found: Lincoln’s First Inaugural Ballroom

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Dance card. Library of Congress image.

Abraham Lincoln began his first term as the 16th president of the United States in a ceremony held on the Capitol’s east portico. About 25,000 people watched as Lincoln was sworn in Monday March 4, 1861. Lincoln left the Capitol and went to the White House, traveling in a carriage down Pennsylvania Avenue under tight security. Later that evening, the new president and his wife left the executive mansion for the traditional inaugural ball.

Many of the sites associated with Lincoln’s inauguration were permanent buildings: The Capitol; Willard’s Hotel (where the Lincolns stayed before the ceremonies); Pennsylvania Avenue; and, the White House. One piece of pop-up architecture that did not survive beyond the spring of 1861 was the ballroom where the Lincolns and their guests danced into the night of March 4, 1861. Continue reading →