Chapter 6: Walking Tours Highlighting Black-Jewish
Community Cooperation, With Songs
Downtown Black-Jewish DC: From the Library to the YMHA
“You may not return a runaway slave regardless of his ancestry or that of the master.”
-Mitzvot in Parashat Ki Tetze
This walking tour combines salient points of the history of the earliest Jewish communities in the Federal City with that of contemporary African-American communities. The emphasis is on opportunities and places that allowed both communities to interact and cooperate. From the founding of the City of Washington until the end of 1850, the domestic slave trade was quite strong in the area, first through the far older city of Georgetown, and then through the port of Alexandria, Queen of the domestic slave trade in the United States. The fewer than 200 Jews officially living in the young nation's capital would have heard and perhaps seen the slave coffles, troops of Negro men, women and children shackled together, being driven like cattle down 7th Street by the various slave traders operating in the city. Several had their slave pens quite near what is now the FAA building, while others notoriously used the DC City Jail. They and the local constables held and then illegally sold slaves and free men of color arrested on the flimsiest of pretexts and unable to either prove their free status or pay for their upkeep while housed at the jail. For years, one site of the City Jail was, ironically, the current location of the National Law Enforcement Officers' Memorial, at the corner of 4th and G Streets, NW. That corner, across from “Meigs Red Barn”, as the Old Pension Office was known, is where this walking tour of about 2.5 hours, begins.
1. National Law Enforcement Officers' Memorial / one site of the DC City Jail: 4th and G St, NW Imagine the year is 1850 and night has fallen, cooling the city, just passing 10pm. You are a Jewish businessman, newly arrived from Baltimore, passing by the City Jail on your way to 7th street to meet an associate. You cross paths with a well-dressed colored man being led into the jail in irons. He bows courteously to you as you pass by, and you wonder why he could have been arrested. You remember being told that the colored residents of this city, even when free, faced grave difficulties, and to be particularly careful not to discuss abolition, given the disturbances of 15 years ago. How, you ask yourself, can public constables, sworn to uphold the law, also be the paid agents of private slave traders? And what to do if ordered to help stop a fleeing slave, given the Rambam's position that one must not return a slave to his master? You hear the strains of a song, lifted up in a rich pain-filled contralto from somewhere nearby singing “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home...”
2. Plaque above grating, corner of Metro HQ / original site of 1st Adas Israel: 6th and G St, NW The year is 1876, and you ponder the the past 7 years of strife, both within the Jewish community and without. Since breaking off from the reformers at Washington Hebrew Congregation, which should have been called Shaarei Tefilah, or maybe it was Shaarie Tzedek, as one person insists, though no one seems to remember now; but how to approach the Gates of Prayer when the mixed seating and organ music were so distracting? And shouldn't Hebrew be used, the Sacred Language, for prayers, not English or German? So we remained traditional. Orthodox some are calling us. Then there was the controversy over colored members of the Republican Congress passing laws permitting the Negroes to ride and eat in the best places in the city, which deeply offended many older White residents, and of course the newly readmitted Southern Congressmen. You step inside your newly built synagogue, quietly singing “Mah Tovu, ohalekha Yaacov, mishkanotekah Israel...”
3. New dome topped Adas Israel Building : 6th and I St, NW Well the year is 1906, and your cousin is finally getting married! In the new beautiful shul just built for the bursting at the seams congregation. Let us hope that the Italian fruit seller, the nice Mr. Stephen Gatt who bought the old building Adas used to daven in, treats it with respect. Our new building is beautiful, just like a mosque from old Spain. Some claim that all of our German Jewish shuls look like mosques from Medieval Spain, but who is to say? Oh! There is the music, don't trip over little Albert Small! It's time to go dance! “Od Y'shama be arei Yehudah, u bekhutzot Yerushalaim...”
4. Greater New Hope Baptist Church / Washington Hebrew Congregation: 8th and I St, NW Walking past the Reform synagogue on your way to the library, you are startled. Stopping to listen as the door opens for a moment, you are surprised to hear what sounds like an English song coming from the building. So maybe not all Jewish services are held entirely in Hebrew after all. The sounds of a lovely organ float out as the door again opens, while you remember overhearing a Jewish friend describing the upper level of Meridian Hill Park. You wistfully ponder the uppermost fountain level, which you never sat in, although you could have passed for White. You feel glad for your Jewish friend who was able to enjoy it, as you listen to another song, again in English, coming through the door: ”ti’s the give to be simple, ti’s the give to be free, ti's the gift to be where we ought to be...”
5. Mt. Vernon Sq. DC Historical Society / Carnegie DC Central Public Library: 8th and K, NW You are a White teenager, in the tumultuous year 1939, going to do some work at the library. As you enter the library, you see all the tables taken, filled with Jewish and colored patrons. You take an empty seat next to a colored girl. It feels strange to sit next to her, since every place else in the city keeps them out, so you never see colored people except doing menial work, mostly. This Easter saw a big bruhaha at the Lincoln Memorial over that colored singer the First Lady had give her concert. She was very good, admittedly, but still, everyone knows that the races really should not mix. That is what your parents said. Leaving the library, a group of colored and white children stood on the plaza, singing a song you have never heard before: “Lift every voice and sing, 'till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty...”
6. Chinese Community Church / Ohev Shalom Talmud Torah: 5th and I St, NW
Oy, what a year it has been! This September, just like that, we will be going to school with Colored kids. Ike ordered our school superintendents to merge the Colored and White school systems, right after that Supreme Court decision. No waiting. They say the Reform shul is leaving this year or next, moving somewhere up near where Adas went, not far from the National Cathedral. We might not get to see any of our friends anymore, since we are supposed to move soon, to the other side of Rock Creek Park, with TAOS on 16th Street. We have only been here since 1906 and now, just about 50 years later, we are leaving again. All of these wandering shuls must be like what the immigrants who founded this shul felt like, coming from Eastern Europe. Abandoned by our older American Jewish friends once again. At least we still remember how to speak Yiddish. Maybe that is why our Aunt keeps singing that song. There she goes again: “Aaahhhyyyyy, Romania, Romania, Romania, Romania...”
7. Relocated Original small wooden Adas Israel Synagogue Building : 3rd and G St, NW Wow! NASA puts a man on the moon this summer, and now our very own Jewish Historical Society moves a building three blocks in three hours this winter! All that after surviving the riots last year. December 18th, 1969, yes sir, this is a day for the Jewish community to remember. Albert Small is not so little anymore, and he still remembers Adas, the Library up at 8th and K, and the YMHA down there at 11th and Penn. too, tying up the whole community from one end to the other. People even used to go from one shul to the other in those days. All back and forth along I street, from 5th and I to 8th and I, but Adas and the library were the main stays of the neighborhood, at least for us anyway. Now Adas is up on Connecticut Avenue, a Conservative shul, and Ohev is still frum, across from TI on 16th Street, still speaking Yiddish. I guess people aren't so likely anymore to switch from Ohev to Washington Hebrew just to be more American, since it's harder to get to now, over on Macomb street what with driving on Shabbos and all. But we still keep our history! And we are all still family! “Hevenu Shalom Aleichem...”
8. Former site of Morton's Department Store downtown DC location: 7th and D St, NW Imagine that you are seeing, in 1970, the devastated remains of the rioting from 1968. The city still has not recovered, physically nor emotionally, from the shock. Mortimer Lebowitz was known to many of his African-American customers as a loyal shop owner, but to the rioters, his was just another store to burn. We end our tour, if time permits walking down this far, with a reminder of the loyalty he showed to his customers, and that that cooperation can be renewed. His stoic belief that the looters did not know him inspires the hope that as we do come to know one another, we can rebuild those bridges, with courage and cooperative purpose. Because the whole world really is one very narrow bridge... “Kol ha olam kulo, gesher tsar meod...”
The earlier more private examples of cooperation seen downtown contrasts with the later more publicly known cooperation uptown between the Black and Jewish communities here in the District of Columbia. We now take a tour of a neighborhood made famous for the shared activism of the later Civil Rights era, taking off from the 1948 Supreme Court ruling in Hurd versus Hodge (and Shelley versus Kraemer) which struck down racially restrictive housing covenants, clearing the way for the famous 1954 ruling on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas which finally did away, legally, with the doctrine of Separate But Equal. That famous ruling, and indeed the preceding rulings in 1948, set the stage for the protests of the 1960's necessary to secure enforcement of the rights gained in the court room. Let us go, now, to Upper Northwest, into the “tree streets” of Shepherd Park where a group of neighbors inspired cooperation across the nation.
Uptown Black-Jewish DC: Shepherd Park
Countering Blockbusting, Creating Integrated Community
We travel back in time just a little to the turbulent 1960's to the fight to keep neighbors and synagogues from leaving Shepherd Park, working to build common ground. In three short years, “Boss” paved the streets, but cost the city both its money and its votes. Many asserted that the Colored 24% of the City's electorate had much to do with the 1874 loss of Home Rule. This flower and tree-filled section, where the streets are named for the plants which the man who gave his name to this neighborhood cultivated, has always been an exclusive part of Upper North West.
1. The site of Bleak House: Geranium St, NW, between 15th and 14th Streets, NW It has been here since the year 1870, and now “Boss” Alexander Robey Shepherd's mansion Bleak House, named for the Dickens novel which he and his wife read together, is finally being torn down. Now that 1916 has arrived, so have developers who want to subdivide and build houses in this lovely area. For the “Better Classes,” of course. What will it be like in forty more years, we wonder? “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be...”
2. Marvin Caplan Park: triangle bounded by 13th Street, Holly St, and Alaska Ave, NW Traveling to the year 2009, if he could see this, Boss Shepherd would be rolling in his grave. When he moved here in 1957, Marvin Caplan saw a problem that he was uniquely suited to solve, having lived among people of color for years, and the next year formed Neighbors, Inc to create a solution. He continued a tradition, going back at least to 1933 and the sharing of tactics between labor movement and civil rights advocates begun with the New Negro Alliance, of cooperating with fellow advocates for change. He went on to tell the story of that cooperative endeavor, describing it in his autobiography, “Farther Along,” after his favorite song. How serendipitous! Here is a group standing in the park singing it right now! “Farther along, we'll know why, oh, farther along, we'll know why … we will understand it all by and by... ”
3. Thirteenth Street, North West: 13th and Alaska Avenues Welcome to the boundary line. Thirteenth Street was the unofficial dividing line that the real estate agents used to use when directing customers wishing to purchase a home. West of 13th street to 16th was white, and between 13th Street and Georgia Avenue was colored, even until the 1980's, when the practice was finally prohibited. “They won't admit they love us, and so, how are we ever, to know? They always tell us, Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps...”
4. The site of Pomona: 7714 13th Street, NW Shhh. Don't tell the local residents, but this was not really the mansion of Boss Shepherd. Lots of long time residents seem to be sure that it was, but this Victorian era home was actually the home of dry goods merchant D. Clagett. Best to just keep on going, and whistle a happy tune... “How much is that doggie in the window? How much can that little doggie be...”
5. Shepherd Elementary School: 14th and Kalmia Rd, NW Dedicated in 1932 as an all White school, in a neighborhood where the houses had covenants prohibiting their sale to people of color, and now, it is, 1963. Thirty years later, Bobby Kennedy is standing here giving an award to Marvin Caplan on behalf of Neighbors, Inc. from his brother the President! They say that the North Washington Neighbors, Inc. chapter was emulated as a model for stabilizing integrated neighborhoods in cities all across the country! This truly is a time when every one of us can join hands and sing, all together: “We Shall Overcome...”
6. The Shepherd Playground: 15th and Kalmia Rd, NW It is 1948, and frightening changes are about to come. Will the neighbors stay, now that colored families could move in, or will they go? It is so nice here, close to Rock Creek Park and all of the walking and hiking trails. “Don't you let nobody, Turn you 'round, turn you round, turn you round, Don't you let nobody, Turn you 'round, Walking on the Freedom Trail... ”
7. Washington Ethical Society: 7750 16th Street NW Proudly built in Shepherd Park specifically because it was an integrated neighborhood. This humanist congregation is part of the history of Civil Rights, and the present of community cooperation. Sometimes you can hear folks standing outside the building, next door to the former home of NAACP lawyer Frank Reeves, singing: “I woke up this morning with my mind, stayed on Freedom... ”
8. Tifereth Israel Congregation: 7701 16th Street, NW The shul stayed, and is helping to Repair the World, one step at a time down Georgia Avenue. Now we finish up the tour looking down 16th Street, toward the White House if we could see that far along what was once the nation's Prime Meridian, and we close with a niggun, a melody that both soothes and recalls hope, as we recall the ideals which inspired men two centuries ago to found a nation predicated on the fundamental equality of all men. “Yai daaiii dai daii, yai daaiii dai daii, yai daii dai dai dai daii daiii aaayyyii...”
We have finished the synthesis that tells the story of Black-Jewish community cooperation in our nation's capital, but the book is not closed. From shared history and shared cooperation can and must come renewed cooperation, trust, and dedication to building a world in which all people, of every race and creed, can prosper and live up to their full potential. The rabbis felt it essential that a person not separate himself from the community. But the question is, what is so important about community?
My experience in converting to Judaism has shaped many of my ideas about the world, and in particular, about the role of community in shaping our world, socially. I find myself coming to understand that, despite my personal feelings about someone who is also a member of my community, the fact that that person is a member of my community entitles him or her to something from me, whether it is my acceptance, my patience, or my invitation to a community event. I am required to give that person some acknowledgment that we are linked by certain principles, share certain crucial values and that like him or not, as long as he or she accepts my personal boundaries, I cannot exclude that individual simply on the basis of arbitrary personal dislike or taste. Likewise, in the African-American community, my community of origin, I often heard friends or members of my family say “But by the grace of God, there go I.” It was generally spoken in reference to another member of the community who may have been showing various signs of the stress under which many of us labored, but were somehow usually able to hide. Individuals in difficult situations were expected to attempt to bear up under the strain as best they could, but could also generally count on some level of support in return from others in the community. There was a feeling that all members of the community were responsible for taking care of one another, to a certain extent. These similar ideas, that community must not be abandoned, and that anyone could experience periods of tremendous difficulties, bind the Jewish and African-American communities ideologically and culturally. Yet, it is also in the spaces between communities, where we cross cultural and ethnic boundaries to live out our shared values and both defend one other and our mutual principles, that we find and strengthen our shared cultural resources. Our shared ideals of liberty and justice for all find firm footing in our shared values of equal human dignity, equal opportunity, and mutual interdependence. For this reason, Dr. King called for a Universal Basic Income for all American citizens, as he pointed out in his last book, published shortly after his assassination, that without equal economic and political justice for every community, our world can only descend into chaos.