January 7, 2008

The third meeting was marked by a presentation of the 1968 riots by long-time journalist Sam Smith. Mr. Smith went in to great detail, as noted below. Afterwards, we looked at a possible route of the Trail, just to brainstorm ideas.

Below are a list of notes from the third meeting:--

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Sam Smith Presentation

Jane Levey introduced Sam Smith, a longtime DC journalist and founder of the Capitol East Gazett Mr. Smith spoke about the 1968 riots and the context for the riots. During 1965-1975 the Smiths lived at 613 Sixth Street, where they were one of about three white couples living in the neighborhood. The Gazette offices were on H Street. He also worked as a radio reporter and covered the funeral of Sweet Daddy Grace as well as the Glen Echo boycott. Before 1968 H Street was a healthy, major shopping area in the city.

Mr. Smith became an activist at age 29 during the 1966 bus boycott organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in response to a fare increase. More than 100,000 people boycotted the city buses on January 24, 1966. Volunteers drove their cars along the bus routes and picked up passengers; Mr. Smith drove the X2 route. He also covered the boycott as a journalist. Later, the boycott’s leader, 28-year-old Marion Barry, called Mr. Smith and asked him to help with the movement to Free DC as a writer and communicator. Mr. Smith did so. Eventually Stokely Carmichael became involved locally and announced that whites were no longer welcome in the movement. Mr. Smith stepped away but became involved with Julius Hobson who focused more on class than race issues. [Mr. Smith became a founder with Julius Hobson of the DC Statehood Party.]

Mr. Smith noted that before 1968, Washingtonians generally had the feeling that the president, Congress, and other powers would do the right thing in the end where the city’s rights were concerned. But this sense of hope changed with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. “You can’t underestimate the shattering effect of these three deaths,” Mr. Smith said.

There was a lot going on in the city in the period before the riots. The Civil Rights and antiwar movements, and the War on Poverty. People were coming out of the neighborhoods and proving themselves as activists. One was John Leyton, a former West Virginia coal miner, who died soon after the riots. Another was [didn’t get name], a cab driver and preacher. Others: Mrs. Mayo and Lucille Goodwin, a longtime resident of Langston Terrace who had a sharp eye for what was going on. Change was happening everywhere.

Mr. Smith got involved in other fights during the 1960s, campaigning against freeways, promoting light rail, challenging food quality disparities among Safeway supermarkets in different neighborhoods (Marguerite Kelly of the “Family Almanac” column in the Washington Post got involved in this); and promoting open dating of packaged meat in supermarkets (Wis. Rep. Henry Reuss held hearings on this).

In September 1967 Lois Singletary convinced the business owners on H Street to form an organization, and on Jan. 31, 1968, Mr. Smith organized the Capitol East Leadership Council, whose purpose was to “unite in common cause when we have agreement.”

The riots did not happen in a vacuum; lots of fights were being waged. In the H Street area, where “24 percent of the labor force was unemployed or underemployed.” Until Home Rule came in 1967, there were no significant political organizations to deal with this problem. “The civic and citizens associations were the best and strongest thing we had,” Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Smith was picketing Mayor Walter Washington’s house as part of the anti-freeway campaign on April 4, 1968, when word came of Dr. King’s death. He went home and saw people “liberating” items, including a Naugahyde hassock. The Smiths decided to stay home after initially packing their most precious things and preparing to leave. They looked out over H Street and saw the individual fires congealing. They stayed home for a few days. Although the riots caused more than $3 million in damages in the H Street vicinity, the Gazette office didn’t get vandalized. Eighth Street SE was also quite badly damaged.

DC got home rule sooner because of the riots, Mr. Smith believes. More on this subject is found in his 1974 book, Captive Capital. Some of his presentation at the meeting was drawn from the book and some from other writings.

One of the real tragedies of the riot aftermath, Mr. Smith said, was that rebuilding didn’t occur. He advocated in vain for the creation of tax-free zones where businesses could come back without paying property taxes.

The casualty count for the riots was low, and the murder rate barely changed after 1968. One reason was that Walter Washington refused to shoot looters, as J. Edgar Hoover had requested him to order.

Lady Bird Johnson came to H Street after the riots. She selected Capitol Hill East as a location for major beautification efforts. Also, urban planner Larry Halperin came in and developed a plan that – for a change – didn’t involve the replacement of people or businesses. (Most urban planners plan for a “better class of people,” Mr. Smith noted.)

“LBJ was a real blessing to this city, whatever his faults,” Mr. Smith said. “He said home rule was second to the Civil Rights Act in his civil rights actions.”

LBJ called John Hechinger to the White House and asked him to take over the city council as if he had been elected. Hechinger reluctantly agreed. Walter Washington was appointed mayor/commissioner, then mayor. At first he used three different letterheads: mayor, commissioner, and mayor-commissioner, depending on the politics of the person to whom he was writing.

The Territorial Act of 1871 was the beginning of the slide for DC, Mr. Smith said. The loss of home rule at that time was largely based on fear of the newly enfranchised black electorate. This was the Reconstruction era.

In the post-Reconstruction era President Wilson segregated the federal government after his wife complained about seeing black men working alongside white women in federal agencies. Thus DC experienced segregation and colonialism at the same time.

On the other hand, the African American education system under segregation drew black families who wanted to enroll their children in DC schools. Again, Mr. Smith’s notes are attached to these meeting notes.

More H Street Stories from the Working Group and Sam Smith

The topic of alley dwellings arose. Alley dwellings were mainly tiny two-story, four-room brick buildings with no plumbing or electricity that were built in the deep backyards of houses beginning in the Civil War era. These houses faced the alleys that ran in the middle of the blocks, and generally opened onto cobblestones. A Working Group member described alley dwellings behind the Atlas Theatre: very small homes with no yards. A black preacher would walk up and down some Sundays preaching. It was like an open-air theater. People leaned out their windows to listen to him, crying Amen, etc.

One of the characteristics of the South, Mr. Smith said, was that whites and blacks knew each other’s history, and knew each other, even with segregation. He grew up in Georgetown, next door to a black family, but went to segregated schools.

Ms. Hier said that Halloween was a big occasion on H Street in the late 1930s. There were lots of people in costumes on the street. She remembered running around the neighborhood with two cousins. Her section of the neighborhood was called “Little Lebanon,” and “Little Italy” was “on the other side.” Demitri Nader was her next-door neighbor then.

Carnivals and circuses used to set up in an open field at Benning and Bladensburg roads in the 1930s. The circus was held at Uline Arena, but the circus animals and performers lived in the tents at Benning and Bladensburg.