In recognition of the nation’s 250th year as a democracy, Historic Chevy Chase DC has launched a four-part webinar series to thoughtfully examine our community’s history, century by century, through the stories of people whose descendants once lived and raised their families on this land from pre-colonial days to modern times. The series, called “Chevy Chase DC at 250: Beyond the Burgers and the Fireworks,” began Jan. 29 and will wrap up in June.

Listen to the March 26 webinar recording here: The Civil War Came to Chevy Chase

Listen to the Jan. 29 webinar here: The First 100 Years

This upper Northwest neighborhood had a unique opportunity to witness much of this history due to its geographic proximity to the seat of the world’s longest-surviving democracy. History tells us that the citizens who shaped Chevy Chase DC literally crossed paths with the founders as colleagues, nation builders, and also as enslaved laborers. We can In fact trace the stories of several early African American landowning families to their economic ties to  George Washington.

Carl Lankowski, HCCDC president, said that the webinar series is an outgrowth of HCCDC’s work over the past several years to understand how Chevy Chase DC became the community it is today, and what it owes to our future residents especially as community and city leaders contemplate development of the civic core.

The Jan. 29 webinar reflected on the first 100 years of America, from the early 1700s to about 1840, when the land that would become Chevy Chase DC evolved from tobacco plantations to middling farmsteads. The second installment, which aired March 26, drew attention to the re-founding of our republic and as we examine the role of Chevy Chase DC in the Civil War — and how the proliferation of batteries and forts not only changed the landscape in these parts but forever altered its economic base. The third webinar, scheduled for May 14, looks at what occurred after Reconstruction. The suburban expansion under Jim Crow caused racial displacement., when locals who did not fit into the racially exclusive community envisioned by its founder, Francis Newlands, were pushed out.

The final installment examines the local response to a modern democracy, with visionary leaders that included local citizen Walter Tobriner, and how the Great Migration – into and out of Washington, DC – affected life within our neighborhood. The webinar will  look at redemption efforts targeting  the promises of the nation’s Declaration of Independence.

First in the Series, Jan 29, 2026: “Chevy Chase DC at 250: Beyond the Burgers and Fireworks”

The first century of colonial occupation of what we now know as Chevy Chase DC was a thoughtful examination of the largely agrarian landscape and its population, including enslaved people whose descendants eventually settled in this area. They were people like Caroline Branham and John Hutton, both of whom were born enslaved but by twists of fate and relentless willpower, they ensured their offspring would thrive by the middle of the 19th century as free people. And they did, right here in Chevy Chase DC.

The 90-minute discussion, with an introduction by Carl Lankowski and hosted by Chas Cadwell, both HCCDC board officers, featured lively presentations by historians Jocelind Julien and Mark Auslander. Julien is a descendant of Branham, a woman who was enslaved at Mount Vernon to serve Martha Washington and whose family just a couple of generations later bought land on Broad Branch Road. Historical anthropologist Mark Auslander of American University, shared some of his latest research on the role of African Americans on both sides of the Revolution, including John Hutton, likely the first Black landowner in what became known as the Hepburn tract of land near Broad Branch Road.

Second in the Series, March 26, 2026: The Civil War Comes to Chevy Chase

This webinar was a time-travel discussion about the Civil War experience in what became Chevy Chase DC. The event featured two guest speakers: Gary Thompson, a former ANC Commissioner and longtime Chevy Chase DC resident, who is an expert on Civil War fortifications that once ringed the nation’s capital; and Civil War re-enactor and interpreter Marquett Milton. American University anthropologist Mark Auslander moderated the talk, while HCCDC’s Chas Cadwell hosted the evening.

The discussion took us back to a time when rolling acres of tobacco fields planted in the 1700s had given way to grains by the early 1800s. The forests around them were then denuded by mid-century to protect Washington, DC, from Confederate attack via Maryland.

Gary Thompson set the scene of the daily life of a nation at war in a community swarming with refugees, many of whom escaped enslavement from Virginia and further south. Marquette Milton talked about the role of the 1st U.S. Colored Troops. Two of the first to volunteer were part of an African American landowning family on Dry Meadows, where Lafayette-Pointer Park is now. While they were free, they witnessed up close the lives of plantation slaves on adjacent land, and went to battle so others could gain freedom.

We learned how the Civil War years drastically changed the landscape in these parts. The closest batteries and forts to what is now Chevy Chase DC were heavily engaged during the Battle of Fort Stevens on July 11-12, 1864. They included forts Reno and DeRussy, and the various outposts like Battery Smeade where St. John’s College High School is today, and Battery Terrill, now owned by the Peruvian government in Forest Hills behind Broad Branch Road.

Tune in for the last two installments, to be held on May 14 and June 25.

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Join us this Wednesday, April 23, for a 7 p.m. Zoom webinar being hosted by the Chevy Chase Community Association about the “WINDOWS 250” project that helps frame conversations about future development of the civic core with an understanding of our community’s exclusionary history.

The topic is a new campaign called “WINDOWS 250: A Neighborhood in the Nation’s Capital, 1776-2026” created by the 3/4G ANC Committee on Racial and Social Equity (RASE) and HCCDC. It features a series of posters that celebrate the nation’s coming 250th anniversary with a challenge to redeem the promise of the Declaration of Independence on a local level. The CVS on Connecticut Avenue displays the entire series of eight posters, with individual ones in participating storefronts along The Avenue.

Log in here for the Wednesday, April 23, 7 p.m. on Zoom

HCCDC President Carl Lankowski will moderate a panel for the free, hour-long webinar on Zoom. He is a RASE member and project director of “WINDOWS 250: Building America in Chevy Chase DC.” Joining him will be local historian Cate Atkinson, anthropologist Mark Auslander, and Jocelind Julien, a direct descendant of a family displaced from Broad Branch Road a century ago whose enslaved progenitors also worked for George Washington.

The poster exhibit tells our local story from Colonial times to the present, including the little appreciated stories of free African Americans who participated in the agrarian industry that once defined these rolling acres; the advent of modern suburban development in the 1880s; the building of an exclusive, utopian neighborhood; and the unfortunate history of land dispossession that  gradually displace virtually all Black landowners by the 1940s. We conclude with more recent efforts at restorative justice and truth telling that aim to honor the full multiracial history of our community across the past 250 years.

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Cate Atkinson, vice president of HCCDC and program director of “Eighty, Meet 18: Seniors Talk, Youth Listen, and a Valuable Collection is Born,” said that the project grew out of a desire to engage youth in the important work of neighborhood-based historical research.

Students from six area high schools – Jackson-Reed, St. John’s, School Without Walls, Sidwell Friends, Washington International School, and Walt Whitman in Bethesda  – were selected by essay application for the project that geared up in November. They were paired with residents of neighborhood senior facilities and became immersed in the enthralling experience of listening to someone six or seven decades older tell them about their long lives.

Also featured in the collection are short biographies of the students, all of whom were between ages 15 and 17. They were taught the oral history method that focuses on active listening and gently guiding a conversation. Mentorship, fact-checking, and genealogical research ensured the oral histories are valuable tools for future historians as well as be priceless keepsakes for narrators’ families.

Students also sharpened their writing skills by creating lively, easily digestible abstracts of each oral history. These are designed to share with health-care workers in the event that the subjects lose agency due to illness or age, enabling them to be seen for their humanity rather than just as patients needing assistance.

Atkinson said an equally important goal of the project was to assist in integrating residents of Chevy Chase DC’s five senior residential communities into their rightful place as neighbors, instead of often-overlooked residents siloed away. The five homes are Knollwood Life Plan Community, Ingleside at Rock Creek, The Chevy Chase House, The Regency House, and Sunrise on Connecticut Avenue.

The Narrators

Among the narrators are a retired CIA station chief in Moscow; an actress who gave up on Broadway to become a typist at the newly created National Endowment of the Arts and eventually rose to acting NEA Chair; a woman married to a NIH vaccine researcher who raised six kids then became an expert but accidental DC tour guide for 20 years; and a British woman who survived the Blitz in childhood, came to America during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and took a Greyhound across America – twice! – before remaking herself as a landscape designer who created gardens at the White House and National Observatory.

Students also had the valuable experience of presenting their work at the DC History Conference this past week, where they shared their work with academics, historians, and community activists, captivating these professionals by the caliber of work produced.

The student participants are Amaia Catan, Lucy Carroll, Gardiner Dietrich, Maddy Fine, Caroline Reilly, Phoebe Sood, Charlie Martin and Natalia Weinstein. In addition, the student group included two guest contributors from Washington International School – Celeste Martin and Sofia Vakis – who created a podcast called “Senior Stories” on Spotify that parallels the work by the “Eighty, Meet 18” group and provides an additional medium.Atkinson said the entire collection, which is on the HCCDC website under the “Oral Histories” tab, will continue next year with a new crop of students. Interested student applicants can email her at cate.atkinson@gmail.com.

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HCCDC is starting a new inter-generational oral history collection in Chevy Chase DC this fall involving residents of the community’s five retirement residences. Its intent is to capture the stories and memories of the eldest among us — whose lives are rich with experiences, reflections, and wisdom — by high school students, whose adult lives are still ahead of them.

“Eighty, Meet 18” will involve a maximum of 10 student interns who will conduct one oral history each. Transcripts of these oral histories will be archived in a special collection on this website, making them part of the public record to be referenced by historians of the future as well as family, neighbors, and other interested readers. They will be valuable first-person accounts of the era in which these narrators have lived. The experience of sharing a person’s life story is rewarding for the interviewees and enlightening for students, who will have the opportunity to look at life from a different generation’s perspective. Students also gain skills in interviewing, listening, and writing, and are introduced to the value of historical narratives.

A “call for applicants” is being announced through area high schools and community organizations starting Sept. 30. Interested candidates have until Oct. 14 to apply. The application process is simple — students are being asked to write a 250-word essay on why they want to be part of this project and what skills they bring to it. Essays should be emailed to program director Cate Atkinson at cate.atkinson@gmail.com.

Three student leaders — all high school seniors this year — joined the project early on, helping design its structure and goals and creating the future website. They are Charlie Martin of Walt Whitman High School, Maddy Fine of International School of Washington, and Phoebe Sood of St. John’s College High School. Two of these student leaders, Maddy and Phoebe, also participated in a HCCDC/UDC partnership that produced oral histories of eight descendants of the African American families who were evicted from Broad Branch Road a century ago so their land could be used by the new suburban community to build a white’s-only school.

Marc Minsker, a vice principal at Jackson-Reed High School, is a key partner in this new oral histories endeavor, as are the five Chevy Chase DC retirement communities that have partnered with HCCDC: Chevy Chase House at 5420 Connecticut Ave. NW; Sunrise Senior Living at 5111 Connecticut Ave. NW; Ingleside at Rock Creek at 3050 Military Ave. NW; Knollwood Life Plan Community at 6200 Oregon Ave. NW; and Regency House at 5201 Connecticut Ave. NW.

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Evelyn, along with her husband Bob, had lived in Chevy Chase DC for nearly a half century until her death July 17 after a sudden decline in her health. She was 85. The family, which includes a son and daughter, has lived in the 5500 block of Chevy Chase Parkway since 1978.

Evelyn was a Peace Corps volunteer, a lawyer, and a community activist. Born in 1938 in Wheaton, IL, she graduated from Mundelein College (now Loyola University) in 1961, and in 1975 earned a master’s degree in government and political science at the University of Maryland. In between, she was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines and had gotten married to Robert L. Wrin, with whom she spent honeymooning in the Peace Corps in Malawi. In 1982 she earned a law degree at George Washington University and spent the bulk of her career as a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). She retired in 2013.

Early in her career, Evelyn did work for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and became a lifelong advocate for historic preservation in DC and neighboring Montgomery County. She was a strong supporter of the creation of a historic district in Chevy Chase DC to preserve the historic architectural and streetscape integrity that she loved about her neighborhood. Evelyn was also passionate about advocating and fostering racial integration throughout the District of Columbia. She also served as long-time secretary of the Historic Preservation Subcommittee of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City.

While it was former HCCDC board member Mary Rowse who conceived of the plaque program, it was Evelyn and former HCCDC board member Jordan Benderly who are responsible for building the program and doggedly boosting its popularity. Originally, it was jointly sponsored by Historic Chevy Chase DC and the Chevy Chase DC Community Association. Evelyn worked tirelessly to keep the project relevant to our community, reaching out at regular intervals to remind homeowners that she would help research construction details of the house to design plaques that identify what makes their house unique. She personally worked with the foundry on each plaque, now numbering more than 300. To Evelyn, the plaques were another way to bring a community together.

Evelyn was a familiar site in many other aspects of the community of Chevy Chase DC, including her children’s PTAs at Lafayette, Deal, and Wilson (now Jackson-Reed) schools and at the Chevy Chase Community Center. She is a past president of the Chevy Chase Citizens’ Association (now Community Association) and also served as Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) Commissioner in ANC 4A in the
Shepherd Park neighborhood when ANCs were first established, prior to moving to Chevy Chase.

Evelyn’s husband Bob, and adult children Martin F. Wrin and Anna Marie W. Yombo, are planning a celebration of life and will announce a date soon. Evelyn’s obituary can be read here.

The post Evelyn Wrin Left Her Mark on Our Houses, Community appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

To summarize the debate, the Chevy Chase Conservancy submitted to the Historic Preservation Office a proposal last fall to establish a new historic district in Chevy Chase DC. This drew the attention of the HCCDC Board and over several months the group considered whether and how to respond to the nomination. In addition to reading and discussing the nomination, the Board hosted a presentation by the Chevy Chase Conservancy at its February Board meeting.  In early March a second group, this one opposing the nomination, Living Chevy Chase,  also made a presentation to the Board. At the March Board meeting, HCCDC board members agreed to hold a special meeting on March 27 to decide on the actions to take. 

The statement below explains itself.

For more on HCCDC’s attention to issues of development in Chevy Chase and the racist origins of Chevy Chase DC, please visit other sections of this website.  There is not a fixed date by which the HPRB must act on the proposed district. Informal reports are that it will be at least late summer or fall of 2024 before there is any action.

Historic Chevy Chase DC Does Not Support the Current Nomination to Create a Historic District in Chevy Chase DC 

Historic Chevy Chase DC has celebrated and documented the history of this community for more than 30 years. It is governed by an active and working board of directors whose members deeply care about the look and feel of the neighborhood. There have been nearly 70 board members in its 34-year history.

We base our decision not to support the nomination on decades-long engagement with preservation issues in our Chevy Chase DC neighborhood that began with the founding of our organization in the early 1990s and continues to this day. 

HCCDC organized the first and only other campaign for a historic district from 2004 to 2008. That campaign was based on an inventory of buildings in a broader area and narrower period of significance than the Conservancy’s. Meetings were organized block by block in the affected area in order to explain the rationale for the proposed district as well as to listen to neighbors’ concerns. ANC 3-4/G conducted a survey that resulted in a high rate of response and an overwhelming rejection of the plan by a margin of 77 to 22 percent. We listened to our neighbors, respected their opinions, and decided not to file the application. 

Nothing has changed about the nature of the neighborhood since then or the merits of the historic district. Indeed, we note that the Conservancy’s current nomination seems copied in large measure from the HCCDC 2008 proposal.

HCCDC has learned something valuable from its engagement with the community over the last 15 years. We learned that preservation efforts in this neighborhood do not require formal government action and oversight. We discovered that our neighbors have both the means and the desire to maintain and further develop the eclectic styles that have defined Chevy Chase since 1907. The Conservancy’s application rightly celebrates this eclecticism but fails to understand that this genius lives on in the choices that are made by the people who live here. The neighborhood has developed organically and HCCDC wishes to support and preserve this spirit. Chevy Chase DC does not need to be saved from itself.

As noted, the Conservancy bases its application on the original HCCDC application, however, the rationale for restricting its geographic scope and extending the period of significance is unclear at best. HCCDC is sympathetic to preservation. We have approached preservation in a balanced manner, proposing protection for worthy sites: the Arcade, Chevy Chase Bank, the Avalon Theater. We have taken an active role as well in discussions with the National Park Service with respect to Chevy Chase Circle. HCCDC has helped install over 300 plaques on houses in the neighborhood. Recently we have launched a program restoring neighborhood call boxes with art and text. In short, Chevy Chase DC already is an active community engaged in preservation work. Given this level of interest and engagement, we do not believe a blanket regulatory approach is required in Chevy Chase.

Since the 2008 campaign, HCCDC has led the community in discovering the racist origins of our map. Along with the rest of the country, Chevy Chase DC has become more attentive to the racial dimension of American history. The HCCDC board became much more focused on how this history played out locally. It is undeniably the case that the displacement of African Americans formed a central motif in the formation of this neighborhood, creating a demographic legacy that lives on into the present. HCCDC took its role as community leader seriously in rediscovering and acknowledging this history and its local consequences. This work is also a project of preservation. 

HCCDC is on record supporting the aims of the Small Area Plan exercise undertaken by the DC Office of Planning 2021-2023, i.e., creating a more diverse, vibrant, welcoming community. As a matter of priority HCCDC supports this vision, specifically the inclusion of income-integrated housing. Until we have progress on this project, a more inclusive Chevy Chase is substantially more important than the addition of a 38^th residential historic district. 

We trust that the HPRB will take seriously its mission to act in the interests of the city as a whole in this matter. This is how HCCDC is assessing the nomination and our role. Though our neighborhood’s contribution would be modest, we believe it would send an important signal to other areas west of Rock Creek Park that every neighborhood should be taking part in this effort. In weighing competing priorities, we believe that historic district designation at this time would have the unfortunate effect of appearing to perpetuate the racial, ethnic, and religious exclusivity on the basis of which Chevy Chase was originally conceived and executed. 

The timing and content of the Conservancy’s historic district nomination make it clear that opposition to the civic core redevelopment is at the heart of its mobilization efforts. Accordingly, this is a major test of the priorities underlying the redevelopment of the civic core on Connecticut Avenue. By extending the period of significance to 1964, the nomination would make the Wells Fargo Bank at 5701 Connecticut a Contributing Structure; demolition would be prohibited, and a likely site for redevelopment of the east side of Connecticut Avenue — for mixed use, shops and housing — would be preempted. The timing and scope of the Conservancy’s proposal is at odds with the other widely debated and discussed improvements for the neighborhood. We believe the spirit of progress and renewal demands inclusion of affordable housing as foreseen by the Small Area Plan, supported by ANC 3-4G, and adopted by the DC Council. These improvements would be imperiled by adoption of the Conservancy’s proposals.

In sum, we conclude that a historic district as defined in the Conservancy’s nomination is not warranted or welcomed.

• A historic district in the specific circumstances of Chevy Chase would undermine the pattern of organic, eclectic development that already exists. 
• With HCCDC, preservation efforts already have an active advocate in the neighborhood.
• In balancing priorities, redevelopment of the Connecticut Avenue corridor in Chevy Chase should contribute to resolving the housing crisis with affordable units, a strategic goal of the DC government with which we agree.

The post HCCDC Board of Directors Elects Not to Support Historic District Proposal appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

We invite you to take a deep dive into local history by watching a recording of a Feb. 7, 2024, webinar hosted by HCCDC featuring two guest historians, Mark Auslander of Mount Holyoke College and Lisa Fager of Black Georgetown Foundation. The hour-long program focused on what burial records at one of the oldest African American cemeteries in the Nation’s Capital tell us about the connections individuals with roots in Chevy Chase DC’s Black enclaves and plantations made in the their lives, since few historical records are available to tell their stories. The cemetery is the joint Mount Zion-Female Band Society Cemetery in Georgetown.

Watch the program here.

The Webinar builds on the HCCDC’s years of advocacy work to amplify the voices of free and formerly enslaved people who lived here long before the streetcar suburb of Chevy Chase DC was created. The research by historians Auslander and Fager further illuminates the connections these Black communities made across the Capitol area that helped individuals survive and thrive in a time of immense hardship from before the Civil War to the Jim Crow era. 

These include persons enslaved on the Belt plantation, in the vicinity of present-day Chevy Chase Circle, including those who were transferred to various Belt land holdings in Prince George’s and Calvert counties, and who, in some instances, escaped back to the District of Columbia in the late slavery period.

They also trace Mount Zion’s connections to free Black families who farmed on Pointer-Harris-Dorsey properties, the present day location of Lafayette Elementary School and Lafayette-Pointer Park on Broad Branch Road.  

Auslander, a Ph.D. sociocultural anthropologist, teaches anthropology at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts. His  award-winning  book, The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family (University of Georgia Press, 2011), rethinks American racial politics under slavery and post-slavery through structuralist approaches to mythology and kinship. He has also written on the role of enslaved persons in the construction of the Smithsonian and the making of the lands that became Sidwell Friends and the National Cathedral campuses.

Auslander grew up on Chevy Chase Parkway and attended Lafayette Elementary School. Although he has long worked on histories of enslavement, liberation, and race in D.C., only recently did he realize that he came of age on land that once were inhabited by persons enslaved by the Belt family from the 18th century until the Civil War era.  In dialogue with descendant families and HCCDC members, he has been reconstructing histories of slavery and freedom-making in Chevy Chase DC.

Lisa Fager is the executive director of Black Georgetown Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reclaiming the past and preserving the future of the historic Mt. Zion and Female Union Band Society cemeteries in Georgetown – active from 1808 to 1950 and historically African American. She leads the efforts to protect and restore this American treasure, and to resurrect the wealth of stories and historical artifacts that reflect the rich legacy of Black Georgetown.

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HCCDC President Carl Lankowski was host of the evening with moderator Chas Cadwell. It was the third in a series about Black land loss as Chevy Chase DC grapples with its own history of pushing out a long-established enclave of African American landowners nearly a century ago, when Blacks were not welcome in the newly formed community of Chevy Chase.

Dr. Mann provided an overview that covered the historical journey the idea of reparations has taken since the days of 40 acres and a mule were falsely promised to formerly enslaved people. Her organization, the AARN, is a consortium formed by Howard and Columbia universities and works with communities and individuals who seek to find appropriate repair for past harms. Explore their website here.

The focus on reparations nationally has been prompted by several seminal works, including the New York Times “1619 Project” and Isabel Wilkerson’s recent book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which traces the effects of American slavery and the post-Civil War system of racial discrimination. 

It has prompted communities to examine long-buried or ignored racist actions taken decades ago, such as the 1928-31 eviction of landowners in a small Black enclave of Chevy Chase DC so their land could be used to build a school for white children.

Dr.  Mann provided an overview of the current landscape of initiatives around the United States to define and implement strategies of acknowledgment, compensation, and education as part of a broader effort to come to terms with this legacy. This topic is especially timely in that the DC Council is considering a formal organization that will take up this task.

This event is part of Historic Chevy Chase DC’s Black Broad Branch series. It is meant to complement a June 7 webinar featuring descendants of displaced Broad Branch Road families discussing the multi-generational effects of Black land loss. The event was co-sponsored by ANC 3/4G and its Committee on Racial and Social Equity. It also ties into a Jan. 18, 2023, webinar with Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, authors of a biography of George Pointer, whose descendants lived on Broad Branch Road. The book is called Between Freedom and Equality: The History of an African American Family in Washington, DC.

J. Mann is the co-founder of the African American Redress Network (AARN), a collaboration between Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University, Institute for the Study of Human Right (ISHR), and Howard University, Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center. She currently has an appointment at SIPA. Her research and practice focus on the intersection of U.S. history, human rights, and reparations. Mann previously served as the executive director for the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University’s School of Law and VP of Research for the Georgetown Memory Project, where she founded and directed the GU272 Descendant Oral History Initiative. Mann is a seasoned educator with more than 10 years of postgraduate teaching experience and 10 years as a public school history educator. Mann started her career as a conflict resolution specialist and has decades of experience as a political, grassroots organizer.

The post What Does Repair Look Like? Webinar Recording Now Posted appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

Read about Bill 25-0152: The Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act of 2023.

The post DC Council Holds June 15 Hearing on Creating a Reparations Task Force appeared first on Historic Chevy Chase DC.

Listen to the June 7 webinar here.

Carl Lankowski, who hosted the event with ANC Commissioner Lisa Gore and the Committee on Race and Social Equity, the descendants were clear that the harms inflicted decades ago still affect them today. How to address this will be the subject of a June 21 virtual conversation Lankowski will hold with Linda Mann of the African American Redress Network, entitled, “What Repair Looks Like.” Register here for the June 21 7 p.m. webinar.

“The descendants of our former neighbors — the Harrises, Motens, Shorters, Johnsons, Hysons, Brooks, among others — were unequivocal when they told us that the loss of land denied them an opportunity to build generational wealth and eroded strong family ties as their community scattered,” Lankowski said. “That discussion was difficult for them and painful for listeners.”

Chevy Chase DC is indeed in the arc of American history with its connection to systemic racism, a reality that is no less important because those individuals who caused the harm are long dead. As Shirley Fisher Turner, a direct descendant of the landowners, noted during the June 7 event, it is hard to argue that current residents are not beneficiaries of those long-ago actions. They are free to enjoy Lafayette-Pointer Park and school, and homeowners financially benefit from the ever-increasing affluence of Chevy Chase DC. Meanwhile, she noted, descendants of those evicted landowners are living the multigenerational effects the land loss inflicted. The harms are both tangible — loss of financial opportunity — and spiritual — loss of family cohesion and the residual effects of being targeted as racially unworthy.

Read the vignettes of seven of the Broad Branch descendants

This nationwide focus on reparations has been prompted by several seminal works, including the New York Times “1619 Project” and Isabel Wilkerson’s recent book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which traces the effects of American slavery and the post-Civil War system of racial discrimination.

It has prompted communities to examine long-buried or ignored racist actions taken decades ago, such as our situation, when Blacks on Broad Branch Road were evicted between 1928-1931 so their land could be used to build a school for white children.

The June 21 webinar is part of  Historic Chevy Chase DC’s Black Broad Branch series. It is meant to complement the June 7 virtual conversation co-sponsored by ANC 3/4G and its Committee on Racial and Social Equity. It also ties into a Jan. 18, 2023, webinar with Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, authors of a biography of George Pointer, whose descendants lived on Broad Branch Road. The book is called Between Freedom and Equality: The History of an African American Family in Washington, DC

The HCCDC Broad Branch Road Project Team that assembled the virtual event June 7 included Lankowski, Charles Cadwell, Cate Atkinson, and videographer Nadia Afrin.

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