The Centennial of the Alexander Crummell School, a long-neglected historic landmark in the Ivy City community, was celebrated on Saturday, November 19, 2011. (Yes, this post is well after the fact, but certainly still relevant.) Empower DC released the Ivy City Neighborhood & Oral History Project, a book that features photos, excerpts from oral history interviews, and archival news clippings about one of DC’s most historic yet least known neighborhoods. The booklet will be distributed to participants, community members and libraries.
The reception was attended by many of the former Ivy City residents and alumni of Ivy City’s Alexander Crummell School. In 2002, several Crummell alumni played a key role, along with the Ivy City–Trinidad Civic Association, in winning historic landmark status for the Alexander Crummell School, which was built in 1911 and served as one of the District of Columbia’s first public elementary schools for black children until its closure in 1972. The Crummell alumni and current residents of the community share the goal of not only preserving the school but also having it renovated to serve as a recreation and workforce development center for the neighborhood, which currently lacks amenities of the sort.
Photos featured in the book demonstrate how Ivy City was a haven for middle- and working-class blacks during the District of Columbia’s more segregated past. The book also documents the efforts of the children and youth of Ivy City as they attempt to transform the abandoned Crummell School into a community center, including a photo of DC Mayor Adrian Fenty signing a pledge to renovate Crummell for community needs. “The book will be a resource for teachers, students and all DC residents, who can learn about this small but uniquely tight-knit community,” explains Empower DC Executive Director Parisa Norouzi. “This is the first known record of the community’s history.” The goal of the Ivy City Neighborhood and Oral History Project is to bring together the former and current residents who both have the best interest of the community at heart as well as to foster pride in the community through the sharing of oral history and personal stories.
In addition to the release of the Ivy City Neighborhood & Oral History Project book, the celebration was also an opportunity to screen the documentary Crummell School: Heart and Soul of the Community, which was produced by American University Anthropology student and Grassroots Media Project intern Sean Furmage.
Ivy City is a neighborhood in northeast DC. Bordered on one side by Gallaudet University and Mt. Olivet Cemetery on the other, it’s a little off the beaten path. Not being within walking distance of a Metro subway line, development and it’s not so welcome counterpart displacement have not overwhelmed the area. For those in the neighborhood whose incomes cause them to fear the harsh winds of gentrification this is both a blessing and a curse. Nearby Trinidad, which is just a little closer to the H Street Corridor, has gotten a state-of-the-art recreation center along with its increased property values and higher-income neighbors. Ivy City on the other hand can’t get a library kiosk or a basketball court but it has gotten a youth detention facility. This is in keeping with the slow decline of Ivy City which was one of those DC neighborhoods where African-American families were able to thrive despite segregation during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Unfortunately, like many low-income and working class African-American neighborhoods, it began to decline in the 1970s and ’80s. Many Ivy City residents site the closing of Crummell, the community’s elementary school, in 1972 as marking the downward trajectory of the neighborhood. For more than thirty years, the Crummell School Alumni Association has tried to convince the District Government to turn Crummell into a community center or a recreation center or a workforce development center, anything that would be a positive investment in the community and uplift its residents. The following audio documentary produced by Empower DC as part of their Ivy City History Project gives you a good idea of how much work has gone into the effort.
We Act Radio’s Live Wire: Empower DC Community Hour 2-27-12 – Ivy City Audio Documentary [haiku url=”http://www.grassrootsmediaproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Ivy-City-Audio-Documentary-2-27-12.mp3″ title=”Ivy City Audio Documentary”]
This version of the podcast varies slightly from the original as we broadcast it on We Act Radio’s Live Wire: The Empower DC Community Hour. Unfortunately, this was to be our last episode of the radio program as the Grassroots Media Project is already stretched beyond our limited capacity. We are continuing to produce radio features to air on WPFW, and hopefully We Act Radio as well, but a one hour broadcast each week is not possible at this time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite anyone out there in radio land who would like to help us build our capacity to a…
Grassroots Media Project Open House
Meet the Director of the Grassroots Media Project &
Find Out How You Can Contribute To The Work of Empower DC’s Media Corps.
Sign up for classes in basic radio & video production and help Empower
DC get the word out about our work!
Saturday April 21 & 28
Anytime between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM
1419 V Street NW
(2 ½ blocks northwest of the U Street/Cardozo Metro Station, 13th Street Exit)
Snacks Will Be Provided. Children Are Welcome. Please RSVP Liane Scott at 202-234-9119 ext 106 or email Liane@empowerdc.org.
On Saturday November 19th Empower DC hosted the 100 Year Anniversary Celebration of Crummell School. The celebration also covered by local media with a video by NBC 4 and an article from the Washington City Paper. The school is located in Ivy City, a historically African American neighborhood in Northeast Washington, DC. The school was established in 1911 and named after Alexander Crummell, an educator, clergymen, and advocate for African American rights. W. E. B. Du Bois devoted a chapter of The Souls of Black Folks to Alexander Crummell in which he writes, “I began to feel the fineness of his character – his calm courtesy, the sweetness of his strength, and his fair blending of the hope and truth of life. Instinctively I bowed before this man, as one bows before the prophets of the world.” Crummell School embodied the determination of Crummell to uplift African Americans through education.
The school was closed in the 70s and Ivy City was left without a vital community center. Rezoning and neglect on the part of the city government led to Ivy City becoming the dumping ground for the city’s unwanted facilities and left this residential neighborhood buried under industrial warehousing and highways. Coupled with the harsh effects of deindustrialization, high rates of unemployment and the mass incarceration of African Americans the heart has been taken out of the neighborhood. After years of struggle and little to show, it seems the community lost the hope to continue the fight against this injustice. But is Ivy City coming back for more?
Alumni, former teachers, and former and current residents came out to participate in the celebration. Crummell School holds a special place in the hearts and memories of a number of people who feel they have their roots in the historic neighborhood of Ivy City and in the education and grounding they received at Crummell.
We aired the latest version of the short documentary “Crummell School: Heart and Soul of the Community” – to be finished in the near future – in order to get feedback and try and involve the community in its production.
The Ivy City community is resurrecting their historic Civic Association (also established in 1911) after a long hiatus. Newly elected Vice President Alicia Swanson-Canty delivered a strong and passionate speech at the event. Residents are beginning to raise their voices a little louder and in unison in regards to what they want to see develop in their community as new housing projects come in. Questions linger over whether the school can be restored as a much-needed community center as part of an ongoing neighborhood revitalization project. The community has spoken, but will they get what they so badly need? This community, and African Americans in historically segregated communities all over the United States, have had to fight for education and resources. This historic struggle continues…
Our hearts are with the people of Ivy City as they attempt to rise from the ashes of long-forgotten struggles for racial equality that still burn with an ugly determination in this divided country. As thousands take to the streets and parks to denounce the brazen greed and indifference of the “1%” it is more important than ever to remember the long and bloody battle for civil rights that have taken place in our local communities for decades and that continue to this day.
Comments are closed 
