Online mapping project illustrates D.C.’s history of racial segregation
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Interview with Mara Cherkasky and Sarah Shoenfeld
Did you know that much of Washington D.C.’s racial geography has been shaped by segregation? That the District was racially restricted and many “historically black” neighborhoods were once exclusively white?
Mapping Segregation in Washington D.C. is a public history project led by Cherkasky and Shoenfeld of firm Prologue DC. The two local historians have teamed up with a mapping expert to show—block by block—the historic segregation of D.C.’s housing, schools, playgrounds, and other public places. They are also tracing the history of challenges to these covenants—legal battles that contributed to the abolishment of restricted housing not just in Washington but nationwide.
Today at noontime, Cherkasky and Shoenfeld begin a series of fall 2015 presentations of their work at the George Washington University Museum. To find out more about the project, Hola Cultura interviewed Cherkasky and Shoenfeld.
How did you get started on this project?Before we started, both of us had researched and written on racially restrictive covenants, including for some of the Neighborhood Heritage Trails. However, we knew that no one had ever done a comprehensive study of racial covenants in D.C. or figured out how much of the city was affected by these covenants.
In early 2014 we were starting our company, Prologue DC, and looking for new projects. One of our close colleagues, Brian Kraft, knows GIS mapping software, so we decided to collaborate on what became Mapping Segregation in Washington DC. He agreed to handle the mapping if we did the research. We had no idea how big a project it would turn out to be.
What have been the most striking insights you’ve garnered so far?
First of all, we were struck by what a great tool mapping is for displaying research of this type. We’ve focused so far on Ward 1 and also on Bloomingdale, which is in Ward 5, because we knew of some important legal challenges to restrictive covenants in those neighborhoods. It was fascinating to see on the maps exactly how stark the dividing lines were that resulted from racially restrictive covenants and how the more than 40 legal challenges we found mostly occurred along those dividing lines. Although we have much more research to do on segregated housing, we have learned that probably close to half of D.C. was covered by racially restrictive covenants.
“From what we can tell, the powers-that-be more or less ignored the Latino population….but we did find something very interesting in the manuscript census for 1920: a mixed-race couple on Sherman Avenue. Mixed marriages were rare at the time. However, when we looked further, the “white” spouse was actually Puerto Rican.”
It’s hard for us today to really grasp the role race played in daily life during segregation. How much was one’s life dictated by racial views?
Until the 1950s, and often way beyond, the places where people lived, went to school, shopped, and were entertained depended largely on their race. We’ve interviewed African Americans who grew up during this time in D.C., and many didn’t think about the fact that they were being discriminated against. They might have lived so separately from white communities and were sufficiently sheltered by their parents, that they were barely aware that they lived differently—that their blocks didn’t have street lights or running water while the surrounding white neighborhood did. On the other hand, some recall specific places they couldn’t go, like neighborhood swimming pools, or lunch counters where they could get take-out but weren’t allowed to sit down, or department stores where they could shop but not try on clothes. For many whites, who lived through this era, these issues were invisible.
Currently we’re mapping segregated schools, and these maps will illustrate clearly how African American children might have to travel a long distance to get to school, passing newer, whites-only schools on their way. We will also post some of our interviews on our website, so people will be able to hear about life during segregation from those it affected.
From Hola Cultura’s own interviews with long-time residents, we’ve heard that Washington’s burgeoning Latino community in the 1940s and 50s was often caught in the middle between the white Washington world and the black Washington. Never quite fitting in either place—sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected from both groups. Have you found any trace of this sort of “limbo” that Latinos (or “Spanish people”) experienced during those times?
From what we can tell, the powers-that-be more or less ignored the Latino population. As you know, oral history interviews are the best way to get at this topic, but we did find something very interesting in the manuscript census for 1920: a mixed-race couple on Sherman Avenue. Mixed marriages were rare at the time. However, when we looked further, the “white” spouse was actually Puerto Rican. Other Latinos may have been categorized by census-takers as “Mulatto.” At the time the census didn’t have a category called Latino or Hispanic.
What’s next for this project? When we caught your presentation last spring, it sounded like you potentially have years of work ahead on the project. What’s your next move?
Right now we have some grant money to research restricted housing, schools and playgrounds in Ward 4, so that’s our current focus. As we already mentioned, we are finishing the schools research, actually for the whole city, and we’ll be presenting it at the D.C. Historical Studies Conference, on November 14. We’re working with a student law clinic at American University on ways to raise money for the project; money will make a difference in how quickly we move forward. In the future, we may also layer zoning and other maps over our housing and census maps, so we definitely have years ahead of us.
Mara Cherkasky
Sarah Shoenfeld
To find out more about today’s talk, and others planned for later this month, visit Hola Cultura’s events listings. You can also catch Mara Cherkasky and Sarah Shoenfeld at the D.C. Historical Studies Conference, on Sat., Nov. 14, at 3:15 pm.
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