After posting last week’s column about changing the name of B Street SE, a commenter wondered how Georgia Avenue SE had become Potomac Avenue. Fortunately, others have already found the answer to that question, so I have been able to dig up a fairly coherent story about how it happened.
All too often I hear about something getting named, dig into the person we’re supposed to be honoring, and find out that it’s just some middle manager who has successfully pulled the right lever for thirty five years. Not so for the field at Rosedale Recreation Center at 19th and F Streets Northeast. On Tuesday, […]
So much of Washington, DC’s history is bound in the inexorable discussion of race, and our schools are no different. As no doubt the vast majority of you know, Washington, DC’s schools were segregated for much of our history; both because our Congressional overlords deemed it so and because, frankly, few white residents felt it […]
To all of us living on the Hill, the names of Constitution and Independence Avenues are a part of our daily routine just as much as H Street or Pennsylvania Avenue. They are not, however, the names originally given these thoroughfares by Pierre L’Enfant: He had given the designation of ‘Avenue’ only to those routes […]
Night had come to the town of Alton, Illinois and a crowd began to gather in the darkness. Some of the men stooped to gather stones. Others fingered the triggers of the guns they carried as they made their way to a warehouse on the banks of the Mississippi River. Such begins a report from […]