The Black Washingtonians

Description

The Black Washingtonians

THE ANACOSTIA MUSEUM ILLUSTRATED CHRONOLOGY

A history of African American life in our nation's capital, in words and pictures

From the Smithsonian Institution's renowned Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture comes this elegantly illustrated, beautifully written, fact-filled history of the African Americans who have lived, worked, struggled, prospered, suffered, and built a vibrant community in Washington, D.C.

This striking volume puts the resources of the world's finest museum of African American history at your fingertips. Its hundreds of photographs, period illustrations, and documents from the world-famous collections at the Anacostia and other Smithsonian museums take you on a fascinating journey through time from the early eighteenth century to the present.

Featuring a thoughtful foreword by Eleanor Holmes Norton and an afterword by Howard University's E. Ethelbert Miller, The Black Washingtonians introduces you to a host of African American men and women who have made the city what it is today and explores their achievements in politics, business, education, religion, sports, entertainment, and the arts.
Foreword by Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Free Blacks and Slaves, 1790–1861.

From Freedom to Jim Crow, 1862–1917.

Building a Black Community, 1918–1945.

Desegregation and Urban Displacement, 1946–1970.

Black Power and the Struggle for Home Rule, 1970–2000.

Afterword by E. Ethelbert Miller.

Biographies.

Bibliography.

Credits.

Index.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Washington D. C.
• African American culture
• African-American history
• Eleanor Holmes Norton
• Washington, D.C.
• United States
• History
• Washington (District de Columbia)

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 21 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470320815
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Black Washingtonians
The Black Washingtonians
THE ANACOSTIA MUSEUM ILLUSTRATED CHRONOLOGY
THE SMITHSONIAN ANACOSTIA MUSEUM AND CENTER FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 2005 by The Smithsonian Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., III River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone].
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ISBN 0-471-40258-3
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
CONTENTS
Foreword by Eleanor Holmes Norton
Free Blacks and Slaves, 1790-1861
From Freedom to Jim Crow, 1862-1917
Building a Black Community, 1918-1945
Desegregation and Urban Displacement, 1946-1970
Black Power and the Struggle for Home Rule, 1970-2000
Afterword by E. Ethelbert Miller
Biographies
Bibliography
Credits
Index
FOREWORD
Since I was a little girl, I have been a student of history. I still have the biography of Booker T. Washington I won in a fifth-grade Negro History Week contest at (Bruce) Monroe Elementary School. Even then, I believed that history was about more important things than the past. Sitting in segregated schools in the nation s capital, I knew that the extraordinary history of black people lived on in our continuing battle for parity in citizenship. We could not wish for a stronger legacy than their tales of struggle against the odds. This book will help present and future generations not only admire this legacy with pride and appreciation but use it as a source of inspiration to go the full distance for citizenship, freedom, and respect in the modern world.
The history of black Washington is cherished by many families, like my own, who have lived here for generations. This volume traces the development of black Washington from 1791 to the present day.
Race and Democracy
African Americans have influenced the District of Columbia perhaps more than they have any other large American city. At Washington s founding in 1791, a quarter of its population was black. Formed from portions of two states, Maryland and Virginia, which together contained half of the blacks in the United States at the time, the city encompassed not only the slave trade but also blacks who purchased their freedom. Blacks often fled to the District, as my great grandfather Richard Holmes did. He walked off a plantation in Virginia, made his way to Washington, and worked building streets in the District before and after the Civil War.
Why the District? It was hardly a beacon of freedom. Not even whites had the self-government and the congressional representation that other Americans took for granted. Discriminatory laws and customs prevailed. Yet Washington was always a magnet for blacks. They were attracted by a unique mixture of advantages: a better life than was possible in the rest of the South, the willingness of other black people to challenge their condition, the city s climate of intellectual fertility, and the promise, still unrequited here, of equal citizenship. This book about black Washington offers a fascinating new way to understand what the District of Columbia was then and has now become, as African Americans helped build the city and left their signature on its cultural, political, and intellectual development.
Not unlike our country, two overarching issues have haunted the city-race and democracy. Throughout American history, as for most of the city s history, aspirations for equality and democracy warred with white fears of black domination. In Washington, D.C., most whites preferred their own disenfranchisement-no elected local city government and no congressional representation-to the risk of sharing power with the black minority.
Slavery and then segregation were cemented by the domineering power and will of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Executive, all suffused with the ideology of racism. It took Boiling v. Sharpe , the District s equivalent of Brown v. Board of Education , to end segregation here when I was in high school.
Unique Cross-Currents
Before the end of slavery, the District was the most progressive city in the South for blacks. Slaves could sue in court to recover their freedom. Slaves, working on their own time, often could buy their freedom after several years. Even during the slavery era, free blacks outnumbered slaves in the city. Although blacks were denied public education when the city was being built, in 1807 three black men with little education themselves founded the first of many private schools for black children. African Americans worked in a wide spectrum of occupations. The black legacy of education and striving for self-realization and equal rights was embedded early in the District s African American culture.
Identity and Aspiration
Accustomed to the city s more enlightened racial climate during slavery times, blacks seized upon new opportunities that appeared after the Civil War. For a shimmering moment, radical Republicans promoted limited self-government and the elimination of segregation. Strong black institutions flourished, providing African American leaders for the city and the nation alike. Later, black residents gained earlier access than most African Americans to white-collar employment, even if they were limited to the lowest ranks of the federal government. Blacks in the District were also better educated than their counterparts elsewhere. The country s first public high school for blacks and my alma mater, Dunbar High School, and the African American flagship university, Howard, were in Washington. The university, the Freedmen s Bureau, Freedmen s Hospital, Freedmen s Bank, and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History all helped to create a unique sense of identity and aspiration among Washington s blacks.
The city became a black intellectual and civil rights capital. Many African Americans who are remembered for their contributions to the capital or to the nation lived or worked in Washington, among them Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carter G. Woodson, Duke Ellington, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Mary Church Terrell. During the twentieth century, forthright demands for racial equality and the prominence of Howard University made Washington the natural environment for a distinguished group of black intellectuals on the Howard University faculty-Ralph Bunche, E. Franklin Frazier, Alain Locke, Charles Houston, Dr. Charles Drew, and Kenneth Clark, among others.
Not surprisingly, the city s legacy of black protest, education, and striving made the District ripe territory not only for the civil rights movement of the 1960s but also for demands for local democracy and racial equality Both self-government and congressional representation for the District were directly fed by the civil rights movement. Just as American blacks throughout the country won their rights only by methodically fighting each step of the way, District residents have engaged in a similarly organized and purposeful struggle to achieve full democracy, beginning with an elected school board (1968), congressional approval for a D.C. delegate (1971), and the Home Rule Act (1973). Considering that the District s struggle for equal citizenship has continued for more than two hundred years, its residents have shown remarkable resilience in fighting for each new right as long as it takes.
Triumphs and Setbacks
The District s fight for full democracy and congressional representation has been a history of triumphs and setbacks: congressional approval of the 1978 Voting Rights Amendment for two senators and a voting representative was undermined by the lack of ratification of the amendment by a sufficient number of states. The only debate and successful vote in 1993 on the New Columbia Admission Act for statehood, supported by House Democrats, was negated by Senate refusal to take up the bill. The approving vote in the House Committee of the Whole in 1993 was withdrawn when the Republicans took control of the House and changed the rules in 1995.
The remarkable history of black Washington is freighted with ironic meaning that underscores the city s own goals and grievances, because this history