April 4, 2008
Forty Years Later, Riot Scars Remain
It's hard to look down H Street NE and imagine that it was ever a bustling corridor. But along with Fourteenth Street NW and Seventh Street NW, it represented the center of the District's African American commercial presence in the years during which the U.S. struggled to overcome the legacy of state-sponsored segregation. It was the events of April 4, 1968 that decimated all three of those streets and the African American businesses that anchored them, leaving behind a legacy that the District is only emerging from today.
It was forty years ago today that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was felled by an assassin's bullet in Memphis, news that provoked riots in at least 110 cities across the country. In the District, huge crowds gathered in the city's African American neighborhoods, leading a campaign of looting and destruction that burned over 1,200 buildings, including 900 stores. Hardest hit were H Street NE, Fourteenth Street NW, and Seventh Street NW. The angry crowds, at times surpassing 20,000, easily overwhelmed the city's police forces, leaving President Lyndon B. Johnson to dispatch 13,600 federal troops, including 1,750 from the D.C. National Guard. When it was all said and done, over 6,100 people had been arrested and damages totalled $27 million.
Today the three corridors are at different stages of rebirth. Fourteenth Street NW is more and more lined with bars, condos, and coffee shops, while Seventh Street NW runs alongside the massive Walter E. Washington Convention Center (named after the man who was mayor of the District at the time of the riots, no less). And though it lags behind, H Street NE is home to the up-and-coming Atlas District, and city officials see promise in the commercial corridor. But the renaissance of the three isn't without difficulty. The District remains starkly divided -- a segregation of sorts -- and these three corridors have seen pitched battles over gentrification, displacement and development. While it's easy to look down Fourteenth Street and celebrate its improvements, it's hard not to recognize that while the riots may have helped kill the original African American commercial presence, government policy since and our own individual actions have helped bury it.
In remembering Dr. King's killing and the riots that it set off, we can turn to some of the people that were alive at the time to witness it. Over at the Washingtonian's site, African American leader Virginia Ali and novelist George Pelacanos remember the riots and their impact; longtime activist Sam Smith shares his own story over at D.C. City Desk; over at the Post photographer Matthew Lewis discusses his pictures of and reaction to the riots; while Reuban Jackson remembers hearing the news as a child over at Prince of Petworth; and at The Root Alice Bonner talks about the "righteous chaos" of April 4, 1968.
Photo by mparas
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"government policy since and our own individual actions have helped bury it."
Um, like what policies and actions in particular?
"Hardest hit were H Street NW"
You mean NE?
Yeah, what policies prevented African Americans from returning and reopening their businesses?
The fact that it took some 3-4 decades to renew those areas hit by riots is testament to the middle class flight that occurred in DC at that time. It was after the riots that larger numbers of middle class blacks left for PG County, and whites left for anywhere north or west of DC. SO what you had left was a core of poor residents who had no chance to move elsewhere, little chance of making it, and feeling hopeless without gov't entitlements.
And now those areas are being revitalized and what's the end result? Pretty open hostility by some of the same residents that lived in those formerly crappy areas b/c whitey has moved in and is cleaning the place up.
My response to such grumpiness? Tough. Cities change. People move in, people move out. Ugly neighborhoods become nice, nice neighborhoods become ugly. Georgetown used to be black, Foggy Bottom was German, Swampoodle was Irish, Anacostia was white. Each of those is radically different than what it looked like 50-75 years ago. Change happens.
The areas hit by the riots suffered from the exodus of the black middle class. And they stayed relatively decrepit until the gentrification that began in earnest in the late 1990s. I'd much rather have that gentrification than rows of empty storefronts and abandoned rowhouses.
"It was the events of April 4, 1968 that decimated all three of those streets and the African American businesses that anchored them, leaving behind a legacy that the District is only emerging from today."
I could be wrong, but wasn't Sears the major anchor on H St NE at that time?
Is Sears an African American business?
Does anybody have a good link to an actual decent history of businesses on H St NE? I've always been told that there were a variety of businesses, black and white, at different times up to the time of the riots, and that it became almost exclusively black only after the riots.
I could be wrong.
From a recent edition of Roll Call, quoting Anwar Saleem, who's been involved in H St NE for decades now...
"It is a misconception, Saleem said, that the 1968 riots involved blacks destroying black-owned businesses. Although the vast majority of residents surrounding H Street were black at the time, he said, most of the businesses were owned by whites who started them in the earlier part of the century. In the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, H Street was a shopping destination for Washingtonians, and in the 1950s, the street featured a few nightclubs that drew national acts like Mae West.
Out of the roughly 250 businesses along the corridor in 1968, Saleem could tick off by name the stores owned by blacks. There were no more than 20, he said, for many reasons, including social class and banks refusing to lend to blacks."
Pelacanos writes for The Wire? FREDTERP
I feel like I am a racists after reading this piece. Seriously, what did I do to keep blacks down and from not opening up a store on 14th or H street?
"government policy since and our own individual actions have helped bury it."
Seriously Martin- explain yourself here buddy. That's really taking self-loathing gentrification to a whole new level.
A lot of the area was an Irish Catholic working class neighborhood from the mid 1800's to the early 1900's. My understanding is that the area became a little more middle class until the early fifties, when 'white flight' started and all legal economic activity was basically destroyed during the turmoil of the 1960's. It's almost sad to see the area change though. Back in high school it was the perfect place for giddy 16 year olds to buy booze without any id check or questions.
"government policy since and our own individual actions have helped bury it."
A, God bless liberal white guilt: absolving hood rats of responsibility for their actions since 1968. =)
...refugees to PG county who only return to DC only to spit on it, block people in on residential streets with their Escalades, and pretend to do their jobs for DC goverment agencies and HBCUs, too.
mmm...love that liberal white guilt!
Some clarifications by one who was a witness. There was a lot of white flight BEFORE the 68 riots, starting around the early 60s. And the exodus of whites also went east and south to PG and Charles counties. Additionally, many of the businesses in the areas destroyed by riots were middle-class Jewish owned. Many of those few black-owned businesses in the riot corridors were spared; I remember the signs soul brother hand-lettered on some stores.
I live right off of H St. NE, and there is no real racial tension. The so-called racial tension you hear about is either fabricated by the press (e.g., Paul Schwartzman of the Post or Andrew Lightman of the Rag) or fomented by a tiny group of land or business owners who try to portray opposition to their bad ideas as race-based for their own gain, when, in reality, residents who live here oppose their ideas because they're just really and truly bad ideas. If anything, I've been impressed by how cohesive we all are, old and new residents, and race is never a factor. In my experience, the old residents have been most welcoming of the new ones.
I have heard the soul brother sign story. I've talked to people, including Anwar Saleem and people who witnessed or participated in the riots. Many of them, whether they participated or not, regret the riots deeply and see them as a self-inflicted wound. Although the land or businesses might not have been black-owned, they served the neighborhood around H Street and beyond, which, at that point, was predominately black. The riots served only to discourage anyone from bringing neighborhood-serving businesses to the corridor until very recently. The riots also brought the neighborhood down.
It's a mistake, though, to externalize the riots. Residents or regulars of the corridors were apparently the same people that destroyed them. It was very much a self-inflicted wound. That's important, because, in the end, the people that participated in the riots shot their own communities in the foot, and it's taken decades to recover. Dream City (a book by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood) does a fantastic examination of that period of DC history. Anyone interested in DC or that tumultuous time should read it.
Rioting blacks burned down businesses - many of them owned by Jews - in the H Street and 14th Street corridors. Whites and Jews then left the city that police and government failed to protect and for 30 or so years blacks had almost total control of the agenda. Blacks elected a majority black city council, a series of black mayors, black police chiefs and firechiefs, and installed a nearly 100% black city government. Then they sat and waited fo 30+ years for somebody else to come in and clean up their mess. Finally some of the people who had been burned out in the riots, and some of their children and a few other brave soles began to tip toe back in and redevelop the areas where they'd once lived and engaged in business. Blacks squandered 30 years of near total power over the city and yet we continue to be subjected to this liturgy of politically correct, while-guilt-ridden liturgy of black victimhood. Look guys, blacks had a 30 year chance with total control and blew it. There you go!
@regentrifydc
Your oversimplification of the issues in post-riot DC is stupefying.
NPR's covering the '68 riot anniversary this week, with some great post-riot pics that make U Street look like Dresden.
regentrify is right about one thing: there used to be a lot of Jewish-owned businesses in DC pre '68 (delis, drycleaning, bakeries, etc). The riots were their cute to move to Silver Spring and Chevy Chase.
there used to be a lot of Jewish-owned businesses in DC pre '68 (delis, drycleaning, bakeries, etc).
Then why is it damn near impossible to get a decent sandwich in this city? There's Deli City, Mangialardo's, A. Litteri, and that's about it; every thing else is chain-store garbage or some sort Nutrimatic Sandwich Dispenser abomination.
That's exactly why you can't get good deli in DC. No Jews, no good delis. Same with German or Chinese food for that matter. Chinatown's about as Chinese as Keokuk, and the schnitzel at Old Europe and Cafe Berlin is nothing to write Uncle Hitler about.