Ellie from D.C.

The riots of 1968 are of particular interest to me for the final project since I live near and spend much of my time in the areas that were affected the most by the destruction, particularly the U Street corridor. I thought that my project could discuss the neighborhood prior to the riots as well as the economic demise that came after. I really like the idea of incorporating, or maybe focusing this topic through the lens of Ben’s Chili Bowl, one of the only business to survive the riots and the 30 years of a neighborhood in ruins. I really want this project, while as unbiased as possible, to come from the voice of long time residents of the city. The U street corridor was once nicknamed, “Black Broadway,” as it was home a rich African-American art community. The vibrant commercial district was painted with jazz bars, cabaret restaurants, successful family-owned stores and famous residents such as Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes. After the riots, few places were salvageable, even fewer were able to remain open. What I do not want to do is discuss how U Street has become a thriving neighborhood once again without mentioning the race relations, the erasure of culture and history, and without getting the perspectives of those who lived through the shift.

There are plenty of sources I have found thus far. Aside from the personal interviews that I plan on conducting with people I know who experienced the riots first hand, I also found a collection of interviews through the Library of Congress, which includes an interview with Virgina Ali, the wife of Ben Ali, and current owner of Ben’s Chili Bowl, and other interviews by residents of D.C. The collection is not digital, but I can easily go to the museum since I live in the city. There are also multitudes of photos from the weekend of the riots, as well as before and after photos.

When considering my project, I concluded that I definitely want to focus on an issue involving race, as the ever-changing demographics of my city has always been of interest to me. My initial idea was to focus on the gentrification of the city in some capacity. In recent years, I have seen Washington, D.C., morph into a city I don’t remember from my childhood. Neighborhoods that once were long time homes to native D.C. families or families that had migrated from Central and South America and Africa, neighborhoods that thrive with culture and history, are being bought out by high priced developers and turned into trendy, expensive spots for more privileged young adults.  One idea of mine for this project would be to do analyze and trace the patterns of gentrification in the city from the beginning until current times. It would be interesting to see how certain eras sparked mass exoduses of white people to the suburbs, while more recent times we see the opposite. To research this I would need to look at census records primarily. I could also find articles and images that depict the changing culture of certain neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. For example, the neighborhood of Georgetown was primarily a black neighborhood in the 18th and 19th centuries. Now, however, it is known for its high end designer shops and its extremely affluent residents.

My two second topics involve race riots. The first of the two is the 1919 Red Summer riots. I think that the Red Summer highlights a very dark slice of history in American cities that is rarely talked about. Race is an issue that it seems many are afraid to address. It is hard to confront a not-so-distant history where white men in uniform searched for black people to torture and kill. There are probably plenty of articles in the Library of Congress database that cover the riots. There are also plenty secondary works written about the Red Summer.

Stores on 14th St and Irving St NW burned during the 1968 Civil Rights riot in what is now the Columbia Heights neighborhood.

The second riot that I am leaning towards in terms of this project is the 1968 Washington, D.C. riots, in which violence and destruction overcame parts of D.C. for 5 days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I think that this series of riots is particularly interesting because it significantly effected the neighborhoods, Columbia Heights and the U Street Corridor, leaving it unable to prosper until recent years. Now these two neighborhoods are among the “trendiest” and “up and coming” neighborhoods in the city. Obtaining information on the event and impact would be particularly interesting since I know a number of people personally, parents and grandparents of my friends and so forth, who lived through this. I know people who literally grew up, went to school, and lived their entire lives in these very neighborhoods during this time. I would love to interview them and get first hand primary source recounts. Since it is much more modern in terms of technology than my other two topics, I would have greater access to photos, articles, and other primary sources.

This week’s activity particularly sparks my interests since I have lived in Washington, D.C. since I was just a year old. I consider myself through and through a true and passionate Washingtonian. I did a bit of playing around on the sites before I settled on two primary sources: a map and a newspaper page, both from the year 1909. I started off with searching for a historic DC map and found one from 1909. I, then, searched the Chronicling America newspaper site focusing on that same year.

Map of Washington, D.C. 1909

Click here to see the full sized map.

Sourcing: This map is located at the Library of Congress and is available digitally through their online database. The location, The Library Congress, is a highly credible institution run by the Federal government, so it is safe to say that this is a reliable and trustworthy primary source. It was contributed and published by a man named, Michael Ignatius Weller. After doing some research, I found an memoriam about Weller on JSTOR that described him as a man of real estate and great interest in expanding development in Washington, D.C and worked closely with Congress in doing so. JSTOR is yet another scholarly credibly source that provides reliable information.

Close “Reading”: Upon closely looking at this map, I notice a few bits of information that sets this map apart from a simple travel map. In the top left corner there is a list of the presidential inaugurations, their dates, and their locations. At the top of the page there is an official emblem of an eagle that signifies the map is of federal importance. There is information and names of the Committee that put the map together as well as a signed date.

Contexualizing: This map was devised in 1909, during a time of urban development in Washington D.C. This was a time when realtors and other city planning officials were divvying up the city into neighborhoods. The only bias I could see as a potential problem is Well’s committee drawing the map in a way that would favor them as realtors, but I doubt that since maps are mathematical and therefore very objective. It would be easy for another expert to point out inaccuracies.

Article from the Washington Times, 1909

Click here to see full newspaper page

Sourcing: This is a clipping or “cropping” of an article “‘Seeing Brookland’ Auto for Carnival” in the Washington Times, dated 1909. It seems to be more so of an event listing, as the blurb below is about an event as well. There is no author.

Close Reading: The blurb discusses an automobile that will tour the neighborhood of Brookland at the “May Festival.” There is mention that the festival will benefit St. Anthony’s School and is being organized and run by the “ladies of St. Anthony’s Church” and “the Benedictine Sisters.” There will apparently be “strawberry, candy, and ice cream.”

Contexualizing: From these few sentences, a number of things can be established. This “Brookland” neighborhood could very well be dominated by Catholicism. It also suggests that the neighborhood is one worth seeing, with landmarks most likely of a Catholic nature. During a time of urban development in D.C., they could have very well been putting this neighborhood on display to draw in future residents.

Corroborating: I chose this specific article since Brookland is the neighborhood that I grew up in. While I live in NW now, I went straight for the Northeastern neighborhood of D.C. when I saw the map. When zoomed into the Brookland neighborhood (the uppermost northeastern corner of the city, on both sides of Michigan Ave.), there were not as many streets at the time, but Catholic University and the Franciscan Monastery are both landmarked on the map. These two sites are still there today. This relates directly to the article, as it discusses a fair and tour organized by Catholic institutions as well. St. Anthony’s is still in existence as well (I attended the school from Pre-K to 8th grade).  Both of these sources lead to the assumption that the neighborhood of Brookland was developed and established by Catholic organizations, which I can vouch is still true, as the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the biggest Catholic church in America, was added to the Catholic roster a couple of decades later.

The two websites that I chose to analyze for credibility are The Pill, a site produced by PBS about the history of the birth control contraceptive pill, and The Commercial Closet, an online collection of advertisements depicting  LGBT relationships and/or persons.

The Pill

This website was created to host and supplement the documentary by the same name, The Pill. This documentary was produced to be apart of the American Experience PBS documentary series. PBS, while a television station is a rather credible source in my opinion. Since PBS is sponsored by actual viewers instead of advertisement big shots, the possibility of an agenda is lessened. PBS has been known historically to produce scholarly and credible work such as the information on their other documentary series, Frontline. Not only does the website have the entire documentary available to watch for free, but it also has plenty of supplemental information including primary sources labeled plain and simple on the menu. The primary documents include correspondences between doctors, notices given to the first birth control pill clinic, and documents written by feminists at the time advocating the use of the pill. I knew a bit about birth control history but this included a wealth of sources, further reading, and even pictures of birth control pill pack designs of the past which I have never seen before making it a valuable site.

The Commercial Closet- Ad Respect

This website was created in attempts to collect and rate advertisements that involved LGBT themes. Upon first glance the site does not seem as credible as the PBS site since the design of the site does not seem as modern or aesthetic as The Pill’s site. Upon browsing, I found that the site was created by a Journalist in the LGBT community, named Michael Wilke. While .org should not be automatically equated with credibility, the site’s sheer volume of advertisements, in print as well as television ad clips, shows that this website can be a great source for research. The Ad Library is extensive and the extra resources prove that the site is about spreading information and education, not about making money, which usually the biggest giveaway when it comes to trustworthiness. The one aspect of the site that may be deemed as a strike against its credibility is the biased nature of the rating. The rating is in favor of LGBT equality so positive supportive ads are rated highly, exclusionary and homophobic themes are rated negatively. Someone who does not share these views may not see this as a useful way to rate the ads but still should find the site’s collection comprehensive. Lastly, a few of their pages were broken, like the Ad Timeline, which does not give the impression of a well upkept site.

My name is Ellie and I currently live and have lived in Washington, D.C. since I was just a babe. I attend George Mason University as an undergraduate student of the College of Arts and Sciences. Because of my love of the written word and my passion for literature, I am majoring in English with a concentration in fiction.

My Online Presence and Activity

I, not unlike everyone else in my generation, have a presence on the typical popular social media sites, namely, Facebook and Instagram. I am apart of special interests communities such as Goodreads, as well. I also have a Tumblr blog on which I regularly post to that has amassed more than 800 followers. Since Tumblr’s platform is groused in the idea of “re-blogging” posts from other blogs onto your own, many of my posts are not necessarily original. However, I do post original posts including my own works, occasionally.

Again, just as my peers, the internet takes a good bit of my life on any given day. The frequency of how much I use Google and Wikipedia each day is probably not healthy. If I am reading the Express paper and I stumble upon something that catches my interest, and literally everything does, I will stop to google it and learn more. I most likely use my smartphone for these sorts of tasks much more than I actually use it for making phone calls. I have certain websites and blogs that I visit on a daily basis, my favorite and most visited being Autostraddle, a queer woman’s news and culture online magazine.