Sights, Smells, and Sounds of Washington, D.C.

Children in street, Washington, D.C, sourced by the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

For this week, we were tasked to write a blog that pertained to sights, smells, and sounds. “What are some of the sights, smells, and sounds that you remember that remind you of growing up?” is an interview question that is asked of every HistoryMaker in the digital archive; it has always been one of my favorite responses to hear and make note of, especially if it also aligned with whatever blog topic we were assigned. For this week, I decided to focus on the sights, smells, and sounds that encompass Washington, D.C., my current home. Ever since coming to Howard, I’ve been overwhelmed and overjoyed by the rich black history of Washington and the DMV area in general. I remember one time about two years ago, I asked myself, “How can I write a love letter to the entire city of Washington, D.C.?” I had spent so much of my time writing about love via poems, and I wanted to figure out how to write one for Washington, though it seemed like a hard task or at least a task that would take a few years. With all of this in mind, I’ve tried to do my due diligence towards Washgington, D.C., especially in my studies (as it has definitely informed them).

Search Terms:

• "Sights, Smells, and Sounds” with the filter “District of Columbia” under the “U.S. State Category” = yielded 14 matching stories

On Sights, Smells, and Sounds…

HistoryMaker Nina M. Wells (1950-)

State government appointee and lawyer, Nina M. Wells (1950 - ), served as the Secretary of State for New Jersey from 2006 to 2010 and spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C. growing up and vividly recalled valleys, fruit trees, and penny candy:

“We spent a lot of time [in] D.C. [Washington, D.C.] has these great alleys behind your house, and you spent your life out there in the alley with all the neighborhood kids, and you did have a bicycle. I don't know whether we shared a bicycle, but you take the bikes and go all over the neighborhood, and you had a lot of fruit trees, and I remember we'd get a bag, and the neighbors would scream, but you'd get a couple of apples and stop. And then we had a drugstore, and we, we'd go down to the drugstore and buy penny candy. We ruined our teeth. Our teeth were a disaster. I remember going to a dentist one day. My mother struggled to make sure everybody had dental care. And the dentist came out one day, and he goes, "Your mother hasn't paid the bill. You all have to go home." So we had the worst teeth. It was a African American dentist, and he just said, "I, I can't do this anymore. There's so many of you, and you all have bad teeth." We ate so much candy. Our diet was bizarre during that period before my mother remarried...”

Candy often seems to be tied to the childhoods of many, along with food. I enjoyed how Wells was able to humorously touch light on her diet and its effect on her childhood.

HistoryMaker Sandra Fortune-Green (1951-)

Ballet dancer and dance instructor, Sandra Fortune-Green (1951 - ), participated in the Second International Ballet Competition in Moscow, Russia in 1972 and was the only African American to ever compete. She was the owner of the Jones-Haywood School of Dance and taught ballet at Howard University and at the Duke Ellington School of Arts. Growing up with her mother on 535 Buchanan Street, Fortune-Green recalled the sights, smells, and sounds of her childhood being heavily centered around being outdoors:

"I lived at 535 Buchanan Street, which is about a ten-minute walk from this dance school. And we lived in a row house. My—I had my own room and my other two brothers [Curtis Beeler and Michael Beeler] had their own room. We had lots of kids on the block. And I was, I walked home from school and I used to let myself in. And then shortly thereafter, my brothers would come in and I would go outside. I mean we played kickball, we jumped double dutch, we, we played outdoor games that you see no children play today. And so then one day my mother said this coming home from school thing, we need to, we need to fill in that space. And that was how I came to dance at the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet [Jones-Haywood Dance School, Washington, D.C.]. And so when I came home from school, I would walk home from school, get a little snack, freshen up a little bit, and walk to class…we played kickball in the alley every day after school.”

I always find it refreshing to hear people talk about the essence of their childhood being largely about their time as kids playing outdoors because this was the bulk of my childhood as well. I spent most of my summers with my older cousin, Kayin, because I didn’t have any siblings growing up. We would do all kinds of things! What I can remember most vividly was freezing the pond water in our grandmother’s backyard along with other miscellaneous things we could find.

HistoryMaker, Roscoe C. Brown (1922-2016)

Academic administrator and Tuskegee airman, Roscoe C. Brown (1922 - 2016 ), was the Director of Urban Education Policy at CUNY. Brown firstly emphasized how crucial Kenyon St. and Gerard St. in Washington, D.C. was a significant part of his childhood recollection:

“We lived on Kenyon Street, down the street…two blocks from Howard [University, Washington, D.C.]. Gerard Street, where I spent most of childhood, from 1931 on, it was, it was about three blocks from Howard, between 11th and 13th. The borderline for the black community at that time was 11th Street. But then as more middle class people moved in, the borderline moved up to 13th. But during the [Great] Depression, the white folks weren't able to get out enough, so I lived on a block that was half black and half white, because 11th to 13th was one long block, and 12th Street didn't cut through. So, just about at the 12th Street point, that's where most of the folks were white, but they couldn't get out. And you know it was--you hear epithets. We lived a separate life. We were there, and they were there. The only time we interacted was on the playground, where we'd play. And usually it'd be a black team playing again a white team, but some white kids would play. The white students went to white schools, which were around 14th and 15th Street. They went to Central High School [Washington, D.C.], which was down at 11th and Hobart Street. We had to walk past the white school to go to Dunbar, which was at 1st and M. And the--at that time, they had Junior ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps]. The white high school cadets would come and drill on our block. They'd block off the--and we got to know 'em. We--there was not--there was difference, but not hostility. We knew that they thought they were better, but we knew we were better 'cause basically it was a working class high school, so we didn't pay much attention to them. It was a very, very interesting dynamic.”

When asked about the specific sights, smells, and sounds of his childhood, Brown, however, couldn’t really recall much, as he blamed it on the cleanliness and mundanity of the suburbs:

“…That was a pretty clean block. I don't remember any particular sounds or…[No] cooking or anything. It was a pretty clean, it was a good middle-class block. The leaves was cleaned up; the garbage people came around. It wasn't a lot of ethnic cooking that brought aromas around the neighborhood. It was, it was just a good middle-class block. Not that I would, I can remember, no.”

I found it interesting how he seemingly couldn’t recall any of the prompts due to the location of his neighborhood. Most of the interviews that I came across gave at least a partial response to the prompt; I felt it would be interesting to also include those who may not have anything to recall as well.

HistoryMaker Charles Warfield Jr. (1949-)

Broadcast executive, Charles Warfield, Jr. (1949 - ), served as president and chief operating officer of ICBC Broadcast Holdings, Inc., and as vice president and general manager of WBLS-FM and WLIB-AM Radio:

“I [remember] food being cooked in the kitchen was always a smell that I enjoyed to this day and enjoyed growing up because we never knew what it might be. One thing about my father [Charles Warfield, Sr.], he would try anything. It would—you know, we would have soft shell crabs; we'd have some type of a, a shrimp casserole; there would certainly be the traditional roast beef and chicken being cooked. But my father was a very adventurous cook so there was always the smells of the kitchen that were there. The end of our street was a dead end, and we lived at the base of that dead end street. It was—there were—there were railroad tracks, and there was a train going up and down the tracks. And it was also at that point an extension of the Southeast Naval Yard [Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C.] extended literally within—rocks throw from our house. So there was the smell at that point of the vehicles on the base and the—and during the spring and the summer the trees and I call—we called them bushes as we were growing up and those smells. The reason I remember that is that I was allergic to everything that was growing there, but it was also a play area for all of us. So, those are the things that I remember on, on the block itself to this day.”

When it came to smells and sounds, Warflied Jr. could actively remember the sounds of his childhood, but not so much of the smells:

“Sounds was, was—it was music for me growing up. My father, he drove a cab at night. My father had habits, some people call a bad tendency to come in the house two in the morning—1:30, 2:00. Instead of crawling in the bed, my father would just sort of sit on the sofa and, either late at night when he came in or early in the morning as he was getting ready before he went to work, we would hear music being played—jazz music being played. It, it might be a gospel song being played from the stereo that was in the hallway below my bedroom. There was always music in the house. My father also sang in the solos and sang in the choir at church. And my father was someone who loved to practice what he sang, and he had a wonderful voice. It would always be the voice of my father singing. You know, there was also some, some things that don't leave such a, a positive memory for me, and I have to tell that as the truth of part of growing up. It was disagreements and arguments between my mother [Ruby Carroll Warfield] and my father. As my mother worked, my father worked. Their struggling with raising five boys, one of whom had a, a handicap [Darnell Warfield]. And things weren't always perfect. They stayed together for the boys. A lot of times I believe they did stay together because of the family. But there were those, those sounds. So there's the positive sounds of the music. There was also the disagreements between my mother and my father that I could never get out of my mind from growing up.”

I could relate to Warfield Jr. in regards to sounds being associated with music growing up and its relationship with his father. My dad played a lot of music growing up. I mostly remember him playing Adele, and at on point, I was a little concerned about how much he liked her and her music.

Litigator, Theodore V. Wells Jr. (1950 - ), was partner and litigation department co-chair at the law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. On the sights, smells, and sounds of his childhood, he mainly talked about the physical activities of his youth:

“…I mean, I never went to camp. One year I went to a Boy Scout [Boy Scouts of America] camp, but that was only—except for that, I mean, during the summer, for example, I lived at Takoma swimming pool [Takoma Aquatic Center, Washington, D.C.]. That was the babysitter. We'd get up in the morning. My mother [Phyllis Wells] would be gone. And, you know, whether I was at Ms. Evans' [Ellen Evans (ph.)] house or by the time I was eleven maybe just, you know…more of what you call a latchkey kid, though I didn't know that term then, we'd get up and we'd go to swimming pool. And we would be, we were expected to be at the swimming pool when it opened at ten o'clock and we'd stay at the swimming pool all day long. And if we didn't go to the pool, we were expected to go across the street to the basketball court. And, and you'd stay at the recreation arena. And I had a field in front of my house that we played football on and baseball. And it was a very, it was, it was a neighborhood where sports were very important. We had a lot of great athletes come out, out of my neighborhood and, and we played cards. We played—I, by the time I was—I start playing bid whist when I was seven. We called bid whist ghetto bridge. And I grew up playing whist hours at a time late into the night. I used to tell people I was the whistologist. In fact, I stopped playing in college 'cause I couldn't get any competition. But by—I think, you know, more people at Howard University [Washington, D.C.] have probably had academic problems 'cause they got caught up in, in a culture of bid whist than anything else.”

I have to admit! It’s something about whenever Howard University that further pulls me into whatever the piece of writing is about, especially when it is mentioned as a memory from many years ago.

HistoryMaker Mayor, The Honorable Sharon Pratt (1944 - )

Mayor, The Honorable Sharon Pratt (1944 - ), was the first African American woman to become mayor of Washington, D.C., and remembered the sights, smells, and sounds of her childhood being surrounded by the smells of cooking, children playing on the street, and bats hitting baseballs:

“I can remember.. smelling the fried chicken and the freshly baked rolls, and all of that coming home from church, you know, that my grandmother [Hazel Pratt] had prepared. I can remember sort of the quiet of our neighborhood…We were in the apartment we were living at the time, but yet the sounds of just a few sounds of, you know, other children out on the street…The world just did seem a lot quieter and yet, it was very comforting when I have recollection—a recollection of those memories. But I can remember the sounds of when we did move. And my father [Carlisle Edward Pratt] remarried, and we moved to a newly integrated neighborhood in Northwest Washington [D.C.]. And I can remember hearing the sounds of, sort of the bat hitting the baseball. And this was a racket—a lovely playground, which was very new to us, because sort of in your segregated neighborhoods, you did not have necessarily very, you know, didn't have the same kind of rich environment in your own recreational facilities 'cause you never got the same amount of money, where as here in this environment, you know, it was just unbelievable—the stretch of grass and all of the equipment. And so, I just sort of—I do remember those kind of sounds as, as a young person (simultaneous)…”

HistoryMaker George W. Faison (1945 - )

Choreographer and dancer, George W. Faison (1945 - ), founded the George Faison Universal Dance Experience. Faison was the choreographer of the Broadway musicals Via Galactica, Tilt, and The Wiz. Similarly to Mayor, The Honorable Sharon Pratt (1944 - ), Faison also recalls the smells and sights of his childhood being predominantly centered around food, cooking, and hearing children playing on the street:

“My mother [Agnes Crockett Faison] was a great cook, great. She could make pastries. She could, oh the turkeys and the dressings and the cakes and the potato salads, the rolls…And since she had grown, while she was growing up she worked in New York [New York] with her sister, so we got a lot of those Jewish pastries. She could make rugelach, right make it okay, so and then or sour cream and those potato pancakes, and in addition to all the southern stuff, I got, you know, we got all of that, you know.”

As for sounds, Faison could remember, “Kids playing and the bus ride, you know, going down the street in front of our house, and stopping in the next block and picking up people, because that was the LeDroit Park [Washington, D.C.], which ended at the base of Howard University [Washington, D.C.] over there like W Street something.”

One of the reasons that I also chose to focus on D.C. for this blog post was because I wanted to see if I would be able to recognize some of the places people would probably recall in their recollections of the sights, smells, and sounds of their childhood. Howard University was mentioned a few times, and there were street names that sounded familiar. I began to wonder how exactly the energy of those streets may have shifted over the years, as D.C. becomes overwhelmingly less black. I also enjoyed finding the similarities in their responses to the prompt. Most people could remember the smells of cooking and the sights and sounds of children playing in the street. It’s nostalgic, at best, and that’s one of my favorite incentives to write.

Student Ambassador Update:

This week, I will present in Dr. Carr’s Hip-Hop class to originally inform them of the Digital Archive contest, but his teaching assistant told me that the best time for him was for one of his courses on Thursday, the day before I intended to stop accepting submissions for the contest. His teaching assistant also informed me that he wasn’t interested in offering the contest for extra credit, so I’m not sure if it will increase participation in the contest. However, I will still inform them of the importance of oral histories in their academic studies overall. I will also meet with my faculty advisor on Thursday to schedule the remaining outreach for the program and what we are going to do about the contest. As of right now, there is still only 1 student who has formally submitted their project out of the 5 that registered. I’ve reached out to the others who have submitted and informed them of the extension, but I haven’t heard back from anyone else besides the one student who has submitted. I’m hoping we can at least get one more submission to have something to judge, compare, and contrast against.

References

Nina M. Wells (The HistoryMakers A2014.216), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, September 11, 2014, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 2, story 2, Nina M. Wells describes the sights, sounds and smells of her childhood, pt. 1.

Sandra Fortune-Green (The HistoryMakers A2007.270), interviewed by Cheryl Butler, September 23, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 8, Sandra Fortune-Green recalls her neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

Roscoe C. Brown (The HistoryMakers A2003.215), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, September 16, 2003, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 11, Roscoe C. Brown describes his childhood neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

Charles Warfield, Jr. (The HistoryMakers A2013.281), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, December 9, 2013, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 10, Charles Warfield, Jr. describes the sights, sounds and smells of his childhood.

Theodore V. Wells, Jr. (The HistoryMakers A2007.175), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, May 15, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 7, Theodore V. Wells, Jr. describes his early pastimes.

The Honorable Sharon Pratt (The HistoryMakers A2007.214), interviewed by Cheryl Butler, July 26, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 7, The Honorable Sharon Pratt describes the sights, sounds and smells of her childhood.

George W. Faison (The HistoryMakers A2007.073), interviewed by Julieanna L. Richardson, March 5, 2007, The HistoryMakers Digital Archive. Session 1, tape 1, story 12, George W. Faison describes the sights, sounds, and smells of his childhood, pt. 1.