Did y'all know that DC is also known as chocolate city? It's gotten the nickname because there were historically so many Black folks living here.
This week, I got to engage a little bit with that history. While we're here to work at the NSF, we also get to take advantage of being in DC for the summer. I like to tell people that you don't stop living your life just because you got a different job for a little while-- even if that new job means temporarily relocating. There are constantly events, both professional and otherwise, happening in the area. For example, one of my fellow interns Mary and I went to a talk hosted by Black Professionals in International Affairs on cybersecurity and the targeting of our communities earlier this summer. You can read about it on her blog here! There are also more networking events than a single person could ever possibly attend-- to try would be a full time job in and of itself.
This weekend, I attended the BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100) national convening just outside DC. BYP100 is a group of Black activist organizers between 18 and 35 years old who are committed to fighting for liberation and social justice. As part of the convening, members who live in the DC area created an interactive museum of sorts to walk the rest of our members (including myself) through some local history. We got to hear from OG organizers who have lived and worked here for years, and from elders who have been foundational in activist movements back through the poor people's campaign and the first gathering of LGBT folks that would eventually become Black pride. It was actually incredible!
The interactive museum and the conversations it sparked helped ground our time in the historical context of this city. We talked about the way DC has changed over time, how gentrification and migration have affected its makeup, how its institutions came to be and what this means for its production of culture. We talked about the challenges facing the Black community here today. Spoiler alert: There are a lot of them. We talked about local policies and funding priorities, the epidemic of gender-based violence targeting Black women, girls and gender nonconforming people, and held space to remember three Black trans women-- Dee Dee Dodds, Ashanti Carmon, and Zoe Spears-- who have been killed recently. I'll just leave this here.
But we also talked about all the strengths and ingenuity of this same Black community. We spent time envisioning what DC, and the world, would look like if we could envision any type of society we wanted. If we could truly be free. What do you think that ideal world would look like? What's one thing you can do to move us closer to that?
It was special to attend convening so close to this new temporary home, and to get to engage with a new local context in this way. This weekend was all the real talk and Black joy you could possibly ever ask for!!
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BONUS: DC Trivia
1. Where was the first Black mayor of DC from?
2. What was the name of the neighborhood that was declared a ‘contraband city’ after the Civil War, where mostly freed slaves lived in deathly conditions?
2. Who was the queer and trans person who sat before Rosa, and staged on of the first sit-ins in the 1940s?
3. Where are two stops/ safe havens from the Underground Railroad located in DC?
4. When did Chocolate City see an insurgence of over 300,000 Black folks, and why?
5. In which neighborhood did one of the first waves of gentrification in DC occur in the 1910-20s?
Leave your guesses in the comments or check your answers online!