Anacostia in “A Right to the City” Exhibition at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum
Interviewees: Arrington Dixon, Rosalind Styles, Sheila Cogan
Interview Date: April 21, 2018
Interview Length: 7 minutes
Visual:
Closeup of Arrington Dixon speaking against a dark background
Arrington Dixon:
I grew up in Anacostia and grew up on Shannon place which is one block off of the Nicholas Avenue now Martin Luther King Avenue.
Visual:
Closeup of Rosalind Styles speaking against a dark background
Rosalind Styles:
I was born in what they call a shotgun house on Howard Road at the base of the South Capitol Street bridge.
Visual:
Black and white image of Howard Road, taken in the 1960s
Rosalind:
It was a row of about I guess about six or eight homes. Most of the things that we did were available in the neighborhood. The grocery stores, you could walk to the Safeway, you can walk to the theater, you could walk I mean you really didn't have to leave the neighborhood.
Arrington:
It was really the feeling of a village and we were in in a village that was sort of capsulized by Morris Road and St. Elizabeth's Hospital and probably Suitland Parkway at the top of the river. The rest around us was a segregated white community.
Rosalind:
We had boundaries in Anacostia and I know that when mama would say “You can't go to Good Hope Road” that was outside of the boundary. And so we we couldn't go to the theaters on Good Hope Road and the Giant was on Good Hope Road and so we just didn't do it because our parents told us that you can't go there. That was the boundary we had to stay within in Anacostia. So we knew where we could go and who we could visit with in those neighborhoods.
Visual:
Sheila Cogan is sitting in her office.
Sheila Cogan:
The family, my parents, bought their first house and that was located on Southern Avenue SE, the district line, between Southeast and Prince George's County.
Visual:
Black and white images of cars on a busy street in the early 1950s and of shoppers crossing a large street
Sheila:
When my parents bought that house after the Korean War, the neighborhood, the community, was totally white. It was family oriented. In my world anyway it was a tight-knit community. Everything was close by. We walked, we biked, I had the bookmobile. it was to me a place that nurtured the person who I became.
Arrington:
Going to Birney elementary school I was a patrol boy which meant we were like crossing guards and we stood on the corner of Sumner and Martin Luther King now but then Nicholas Avenue.
Visual:
About two dozen young boys are posing with a Birney School banner.
Arrington:
And we would, we were doing our duty. And the buses would come by and on the bus were young people from the schools that were down like Anacostia and others that were segregated white schools. And they would spit out the bus at us and they'd throw things at us. So we got the message and we'd learned to survive that.
Sheila:
1954 was an extraordinary year in my life and I think in the life of the city. I came to understand as I graduated Anne Beers Elementary in 1954 that during that summer the Supreme Court decision had been, regarding school integration, had been made.
Visual:
Front page of the Evening Star on May 17, 1954
Sheila:
And as I look back on it I knew, and I even knew then, that Washington was the crucible. We were the social experiment. And between June and September of 1954 the schools of Washington DC were integrated just like that.
Visual:
Black and White elementary school students pose in their best outfits.
Sheila:
And so the faculties were integrated, the student bodies were integrated, and it occurred in a period of three months from the date of the Supreme Court decision until the following September when we all entered integrated schools. There was nothing really that prepared us as students, as pupils, to understand the magnitude of the changes that were occurring.
And it just happened. Within a short period of time, I think the term was “blockedbusted”, real estate agents who saw a chance to make a profit brought black buyers into the community.
Visual:
As Sheila speaks, there is a series of images of an all-White graduating class of John Philip Sousa Junior High in 1953, followed by an all-Black graduating class a few years later.
Sheila:
And as soon as one house was sold white flight ensued. Within a very, very short period of time the entire community had changed from a white community to a black community.
Rosalind Styles:
And then it became the worst place to go. it became where your fear to be over there, to live there, to visit there, “Oh don't go to Anacostia,” and then it became, “You can't talk to those people in Anacostia.” And so the perception of our neighborhood deteriorated.
Arrington:
One reason I got involved in politics was to be able to access resources that could make differences in people's lives.
Visual:
Image of the first elected DC City Council in 1975
Arrington:
And I do think it came out of the Anacostia experience where we were sort of disconnected in many ways from the access the city, as a whole, and things that we could get for our community. That was one of the things that had drove me the fact that I grew up here and I saw the connection and the need for the you know support of a neighborhood.
Rosalind:
What we have to continue to do is now that they're bringing the dollars back into the neighborhoods is that the people who are being impacted by this redevelopment, have the first right to the development initiative. To participate, to benefit from it, if not for themselves but for their children.
Because again this is still Anacostia. This is our neighborhood. The neighborhood is turning white as we speak. But what we have to do if you want to stay here and live here, you have to invest in its redevelopment initiatives. And so that's what I do now, I make sure that developers who get contracts, in any community, it's not just Anacostia, anywhere in this city, I organize the community and make sure that every investment that has public funds, that they use those funds to benefit the local residents and businesses in those neighborhoods.
End Credits:
Photographs courtesy of:
Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives
Dale-Patterson Family Collection, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution
DC Public Library, Washingtoniana Division
District Department of Transportation (DDOT) Library
Library of Congress
