HCCDC held a virtual webinar on June 7 to introduce some descendants of the African American families evicted nearly a century ago from Broad Branch Road in Chevy Chase DC to current residents. The well-attended virtual event included a pre-recorded intimate conversation among descendants talking about their reactions and perceptions of learning about this long-forgotten history with the Rev. William H. Lamar of Metropolitan AME Church.
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.