Book Review: Smith’s Washington At Home, and Adulting Education

Today, adulting education, part of Project Do Better, comes as a short post on financial self-defense in DC history, which is one of the pre-requisite bits of knowledge to be proven before one can show that one is a true Serving Adult, in the proposed Service Adulthood Challenge. This part of the three parts of self-defense (physical, financial and emotional self-defense), involves knowing your rights and responsibilities in your state or region, as well as in your nation of residence (and origin, if that nation, as often happens, has a claim on you, still). It also involves understanding our shared histories. This book, happily, has a good bit of DC history, even Black history, and a bit of Jewish DC as well.

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Before I delve into DC history, please remember to “Adult” for yourself, and find out what your legal financial rights are, for instance regarding statutes of limitations on debt, which is is your responsibility to know and defend…

     Here is why I am using an old photo taken of me with a fellow anti-war peaceful protester at the weekly silent Stop The War vigil    in Bath, England, back in 2007 (yes, the same year that I stood in that gap to stop a beating…):  it reminds me of where I personally have been, just as the research I did on DC history reminded me where my family and those around them, from DC and the MD, VA, but mostly DC area, since well before the Civil War, in varying states of free-ness, but all either MU (mulatto) or Black, and thus subject to the Black Codes in whichever of the three states they live in or passed through.  So they really had to be Adults, and know the laws of every area they were in or from.  Part of that “adulting,” as some people like to call it these days, included protecting themselves and their family members whenever possible by owning property  (Note: updated in 2023…).  So, here is the review.

     I found my old notes, from 2010, in my research notebook, and realized that I had never written them up after creating the tours for SHIRtour, my DC community cooperation walking tour company.  What strikes me most immediately about these notes is page 200, where Smith notes that the 1874 DC disenfranchisement “was definitely influenced by ” the fact that more than a quarter of the District’s population was Black, suggesting further reading in Brown, 1978, The Negro In Washington.  In my review of the Guide to Black Washington/ (reviewed back on Feb3rd…), we saw mention of John F. Cook, Sr., and Smith mentions him here, also, as setting up the 15th St. Presb. Church, the first Colored Preb. church (in DC, I presume).  The famous paper of the DC Negro Press, The Washington Bee, is mentioned alongside The People’s  Advocate, and on to Black Broadway on U St, NW, from the 1920s -1950s, and the Howard Theater in DC, which opened at the same time as many other places, in 1910, but Ben’s Chili Bowl doesn’t open until 1958!  🙂  (made famous by President Obama, but we local native Washingtonians all have parents who’ve eaten there for their entire lives…)      And most astoundingly of all, that we were never taught in school, was the fact that on 23 July, 1919, at 7th & U, NW, over two thousand armed Black residents defended their neighborhood White attacks, provoked by the mainstream (white) press!   Who knew about this, and why did we never learn about it?

     More notes about Mt. Pleasant as an early integration neighborhood, cooperation instead of White Flight in Adams Morgan, and Moses Liverpool, George Bell, & Nicholas Franklin opening a school, and Pres. George Washington’s letters to the Touro Synagogue, in Newport, RI as precedent for shuls in DC, cooperation in the Deanwood neighborhood, and Shepherd Park against Block Busters (& Boss Shepherd pbbl turning in his grave!!)…

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2011-08-08 16:52:00
gender-diffs among Black landowners in Wash. County, 1855… Curious…
I do not have time now, but I am dying to look into why (on p. 127 of Washington at home: An illustrated history of neighborhoods in the nation’s capital; second edition, 2010, JHU Press, Kathryn Schneider Smith, ed.)

4 of the 5 black landowners in what is now roughly the Brightwood neighborhood (via the 1855 Washington County assessment listing 31 landowners along the 7th St. Turnpike, opened in 1822, from Rock Creek Church Rd to the District Line

(presumably meaning to what was then Boundary Street, now FL ave., marking the border of the Federal City, aka City of Washington)  Line, were women.

No time to delve, must check this wonderful book out again in a few weeks!

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So, it turns out that many of the former slaves who owned property were light-skinned women, manumitted by their owners, as has happened in at least two cases in my family.  This may or many not partially explain the lack of Black male property owners in DC at the time vis-a-vis Black Women owners.  More research is needed, but it holds with commentary down the family line about women being differently positioned in the DC black community.  As for the Jewish community in DC,   Washington Hebrew Congregation starts without a building, much of the community living along on 7th Street, NW, which was also known as Market str if I recall correctly, as it leads down to the Wharf, back in 1852.  The YMHA, on 11th and Penn. was also an important center of the community.  Several families came down from Baltimore around and especially after the Civil War.  For more details on the synagogues, see pages 62, 91, & 94.

    More on my continuing striving with family history and financial self-defense next week, friends:

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Share  two different resources on your ideas of financial self-defense.

2.) Share your thoughts on how you found and like each of the resources you found.

 

ShiraDest

based on a post  originally drafted in September of  12020 HE