DC AFRICANA ARCHIVES

PROJECT KICKS OFF

Derek Gray, Archivist

You have old boxes of photos. You’re not sure what to

do with them. You have letters and scrapbooks from

your grand (and great-grand) parents. You think they are

junk, no one is interested in them, so why keep them

around, right?

Wrong! The DC Public Library Special Collections

Department is currently seeking photographs, letters, scrapbooks, and other memorabilia that are

what is nowadays called “hidden history” through the DC Africana Archives Project or “DCAAP.”

In 2014, the George Washington University (GWU) received a $496,000 grant from the Council on

Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to establish the project. Its goal is to document African

American and African history, culture, and politics in the District of Columbia through items regard-

less of format documents, video and audio recordings, photographs, etc. DC AFRICANA, contin-

ued page 4

Spring 2015

U STREET ORAL

HISTORY PROJECT,

page 2

Georgetown Property Records Rescued. . . . . 2

Commissioners Reports Digitized. . . . . 3

Special Collections News Items and

Coming Events. . . . . 3

Hours and Contact. . . . . 4

The Intelligencer The Latest News From Washingtoniana and Black Studies, DC Public Library

From Josephine Butler Collection, DC Community Archives,

From The Evening Star Collection, Washingtoniana, U Street

GEORGETOWN PROPERTY RECORDS RESCUED

Jerry McCoy, Librarian

From the “Archival Collections That Almost

Got Away” file comes this assemblage of

thirty years-worth of Georgetown property

sales records that had been consigned to a

dumpster. Eighteen shoe boxes of meticu-

lously arranged records that were begun in

the early 1980s had been placed in garbage

bags and were ready to be thrown out when a friend of the Peabody Room spotted them.

He asked the owner if he could donate them to our collection and permission was granted (along

with a signed deed of gift form). Over half of the materials have been incorporated into our house

history files. This important information adds immensely to the economic and social history of

Georgetown.

If you have materials relating to a Georgetown property (especially photographs, no matter how

recent) please consider donating the originals or even copies. Future researchers will thank you.

Contact Jerry A. McCoy at jerry.mccoy@dc.gov or (202) 727-0233.

U STREET MEMORIES FROM

DUKE ELLINGTON

TO MARVIN GAYE

Kelly E. Navies, Librarian

During the early to mid-20th Century, the district known as

U Street was the heart of the African American business

and recreation communities of Washington, DC. Known

briefly as “Black Broadway” during the Jazz age of the

1920s, this area, with its multitude of businesses, was a haven for African Americans from all walks

of life in a city deeply marked by legal segregation.

When the legendary Howard Theatre re-opened in 2012, there was a resurgence of interest in the

history of this iconic theatre and the historic U street corridor. As an oral historian, I knew that there

were dozens of people still around who remembered this area before the destruction that occurred in

the wake of the 1968 riots. Thus the U Street Oral History Project was born. With the help of Jazz

historian and WPFW radio personality, Rusty Hassan, I found native Washingtonians who had vivid

memories of the scene either as performers, business owners, entertainment industry professionals,

or just patrons who frequented the area. U STREET, continued page 4

From DC Community Archives, Washingtoniana

COMMISSIONERS REPORTS DIGITIZED

Lauren Algee, Digital Projects Librarian

The Reports of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia have been

digitized from microfilm and are available to view through our DigDC web

portal at: digdc.dclibrary.org. This marks the first unveiling of a new col-

lection since the launch of DigDC in October 2104.

These volumes contain reports compiled from numerous DC government

offices and were presented to Congress by the three-member Board of

Commissioners annually. They provide a unique, detailed glimpse into

DC life and government spanning from 1874-1929. A majority of the vol-

umes consist of annual statistical charts and summaries on subjects

ranging from city expenditures to residential demographic data to de-

tailed public health information. Some reports also include maps, illustra-

tions, diagrams and photographs such as this 1898 image of early electri-

cal lines in D.C.

Special Collections News Items and Coming Events

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The DC Punk Archive continues to grow, including a recent donation of or-

ganizational records from Radio CPR. Project updates: dclibrary.org/punk

Join Charlene Drew Jarvis delivered a lecture about women in politics and

government on March 26, 6:30pm in the Black Studies Center.

Author Garrett Peck discussed Walt Whitman in Washington, DC: The Civil

War and America’s Greatest Poet on March 26, 6:30pm in Washingtoniana.

Women’s History Ride with Women & Bicycles will feature images from

Washingtoniana. Meet on March 28 at 1pm in front of MLK Library then visit

several other neighborhood libraries.

Celebrate U Street with the DC Legendary Musicians on April 2, 6pm in the

Great Hall.

House History workshop returns April 18, 2015. Register at

dchumanities.org.

Call for submissions: Annual Conference on DC Historical Studies. Visit

dchistory.org

Corner Thirteen-And-A-Half Street and

Pennsylvania Avenue. April 1898

Charlene Drew Jarvis, PhD

DC AFRICANA from page 1

The current collection being processed is the Lawrence Guyot, Jr. Papers.

Mr. Guyot was an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, columnist, and

activist in the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Mississippi Free-

dom Democratic Party in the 1960s. The collection is being preserved, ar-

ranged and described by Emily Weeks and Jada Curtis, two GWU graduate

students hired for the project.

The DCAAP will organize, describe, and catalog the items, and create a

website administered by GWU for public access. Although the university is

the lead grant recipient, the DC Public Library is working with several other

repositories in the city: District of Columbia Archives, Howard University’s

Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, the Historical Society of Washington,

DC, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (Archives

Center).

To learn more about the DC Africana Archives Project and/or to donate items, please contact Derek

Gray, Archivist, at derek.gray2@dc.gov or (202) 727-2272.

U STREET from page 2

On August 28 2014, the Washington Post profiled the project on the very

same day that I hosted a U Street program at the Busboys and Poets on

14th St. NW. Consequently, the event drew a packed audience with perfor-

mances by Gregory Gaskins of the DC Legendary Musicians and the U

Street Jazz Collective. See link: tinyurl.com/mwytgc6

In January 2015, WJLA, channel 7 ran a story on the project which featured

4th generation Washingtonian Sandra Butler-Truesdale and performer, Ida

Campbell. Ms. Butler-Truesdale was the first interviewee for the project and

is the founder of the DC Legendary Musicians. Currently, the U Street Oral

History project is wrapping up and the oral histories will be digitized and

made available this year. For future updates about the accessibility of the

oral histories, please visit dclibrary.org/research/collections.

About Special Collections

Hours: Monday-Thursday 11am - 8pm, Friday-Saturday 9:30am - 5:30pm or by appointment

Location: Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial Library, 901 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20009

Washingtoniana, Room 307 Black Studies Center, Room 316

202-727-1213 202-727-1211

wash.dcpl@dc.gov dclibrary.org/research/collections

Special Collections projects have been funded in part by:

From Arrington Dixon Collection, DC

Community Archives, Washingtoniana

Therrell Smith, Interviewee