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The DC Almanac is a collection of little known or suppressed facts about the colony of Washington DC. Additional entries are welcome. Send to DC ALMANAC. Published by the Progressive ReviewQ-Z
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QUICKSILVER TIMES Quicksilver Times was one of the Washington's alternative newspapers in the 1960s. The following is from Angus Mackenzie's Secrets: The CIA's War At Home ANGUS MACKENZIE One of Ober's top agents, who excelled at analyzing divisions between political camps, was Chicago-born Salvatore John Ferrera, a diminutive young man with black hair, black eyes, and (according to his girlfriend of the time) a frightfully nervous stomach. He was recruited by the CIA while studying political science at Loyola University in Chicago. From his studies, he developed an ability to navigate the ideological, strategic, and tactical differences of the antiwar groups in the United States and abroad. Only a few bare facts of Ferrera's story as a domestic spy have surfaced, lines here and there in scattered news reports. The full story is still classified as secret, but what is now known provides a noteworthy illustration of Ober's operation at work. Ferrera's first assignment was to infiltrate a group of antiwar activists who were setting out to publish a tabloid newspaper in Washington, D.C. Their leader was Terrence "Terry" Becker Jr., a former college newspaper editor and former Newhouse News Service reporter. Becker was struggling to assemble the first issue of Quicksilver Times when Ferrera walked up the stairs of a recently rented white clapboard house that was to serve the group as both home and office. With Ferrera was a friend, William Blum, who introduced Ferrera to Becker. Blum was an old hand in Washington's dissident circles. He had recently resigned from the State Department and in 1967 helped found the Washington Free Press. Becker welcomed Ferrera as Blum's buddy, and Ferrera offered to help Becker with the task at hand: building frames for light tables. Once finished, they inserted the bulbs and got down to the business of pasting together the first issue of Quicksilver Times. Ober was kept well informed about Quicksilver and hundreds of newspapers like it. According to CIA officer Louis Dube, Ober soon learned that Quicksilver was "just making it financially" and that the newspaper "was not receiving outside financial help, foreign or domestic." Again, however, despite the lack of any evidence of foreign funding, Ober kept investigating. At Quicksilver, Ferrera made himself indispensable as a writer and photographer. His articles and photographs appeared in nearly every issue, in more than thirty issues altogether. After writing one piece under his own name -- on June 16,1969, in the first issue of the paper -- he assumed a pseudonym, Sal Torey. Ferrera made an ideal domestic CIA operative: young and hip-looking, with a working vocabulary of the Left. . . One of Ferrera's early targets was Karl Hess. An influential conservative Republican, Hess had headed the party's platform committee in 1960 and 1964 for Barry Goldwater, but by the late 1960s he had strayed from his party into the ranks of antiwar radicalism. He was editing a libertarian-anarchist newsletter, The Libertarian, and was about to launch a new publication, Repress, intended to document the growing repression of liberty in the United States. Hess was especially interested in uncovering police espionage and surveillance. Repress was never published, but Ferrera spent quite a lot of time working on it, all the while reporting back to Ober about Hess's activities. Ferrera also sent Ober reports on the Youth International Party, better known as the Yippies. When the U.S. Justice Department indicted Yippie leaders Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and other antiwar activists for conspiring to cross state lines to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Quicksilver staff got parade permits for a protest march in front of the Justice Department. The subsequent "Chicago Eight" trial turned into a major courtroom confrontation between the Nixon administration and the antiwar movement. (The case became known as the "Chicago Seven" after defendant Bobby Seale was removed and tried separately.) Ferrera befriended the defendants and interviewed their lawyers, William Kunstler and Leonard Wingless, providing the CIA with inside intelligence about the most important political trial of the era. Ferrera's pose as a newsman allowed him to ask questions, take notes, and photograph his targets, and his pose as a friend of the movement let him insinuate himself into meetings where antiwar actions and legal strategies were planned. Ober and FBI counterintelligence chief William Sullivan employed one special agent, Samuel Popish, just to carry thousands of daily reports by hand between FBI and CIA headquarters, and at least seven FBI informants were deployed around Becker, Ferrera, and Blum at Quicksilver. New volunteers at Quicksilver's staff meetings sowed opposition to the paper's founders, which led to a shutdown of the newspaper at a critical moment. Several of the super-militant newcomers took control of the Quicksilver office and literally hurled Becker's allies out the door and down the stairs. A white female supporter of Becker was called a white racist by the black leader among the newcomers, who threw her to the floor and hit her in the face. Becker's allies did manage to get some of their production equipment out of the building, including their homemade light tables, and moved everything to another apartment building, but publication had to be suspended just as Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. The answering protests were a high-water mark of the antiwar movement. College students conducted a nationwide strike at more than three hundred campuses, but Quicksilver was unable to print one word on the action. In an FBI report about Quicksilver, since declassified, the FBI special agent in charge assured headquarters that he was continuing to use his agents to create dissension within protest groups. In his words, he was "continuing attempts to develop plans to utilize sources to promote political differences in New Left organizations." He also reported that he was planning to produce a newsletter to counter Quicksilver. On May 8, 1970, Quicksilver Times resumed publishing and Salvatore Ferrera sent Ober several reports on the reconstituted newspaper commune. Terry Becker had been shaken by the earlier influx of disruptive volunteers. Because of the democratic form of Quicksilver meetings, meetings, the newcomers had each been accorded one vote and so were able to overthrow him. But now Becker was beginning to suspect this had been a government-directed coup, and he took steps to tighten his control of the paper and keep out dissenters. Becker would no longer accept people who simply showed up on his doorstep, posing as helpers. As it turned out, Ferrera also was eased out, even though Becker had no inkling that Ferrera was a CIA agent. "We collectivized at that point," Becker says. "If you worked on the paper, you had to live in the house. No outside income. If you had outside income, you pooled it. No outside jobs. The paper paid everybody's bills. We were criticized for being too closed, but it was the only way to avoid a repetition of what had happened." Ferrera wrote that the collective was so tense and introspective he found it difficult to tolerate: "No male or female chauvinism is tolerated. Both sexes at the Quicksilver collective assist in all aspects of the commune. There is . . . plenty of sex and this causes problems." Ferrera reported that one woman was spending less time with the father of her child and more with another man. Ferrera told Ober that he could not imagine living so close to the people he was spying on, day in and day out. "He wouldn't even consider staying there," a CIA agent later reported. FRANKLIN RAINES 2007 EDWARD IWATA, USA TODAY - Federal regulators filed civil charges against former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines and two other former executives, accusing them of manipulating Fannie Mae's earnings to jack up their bonuses. In a complaint with an administrative law judge, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight detailed 101 charges from 1998 to 2004 against Raines, former chief financial officer Timothy Howard and former controller Leanne Spencer, who all resigned in 2003 as the Fannie Mae scandal worsened. OFHEO is seeking $100 million in penalties and $115 million in return of bonuses. The regulator also seeks the return of legal fees, and to bar the former executives from any future business with Fannie Mae. . . Fannie Mae was run by Harvard University graduate Raines, former budget director in the Clinton administration and one of the first black CEOs of a major corporation. [It is worth noting that this is a bigger scandal than the Washington Teachers Union one or anything that happened during the Marion Barry administration.] 2006 KATHLEEN DAY WASHINGTON POST, 2006 - Fannie Mae engaged in "extensive financial fraud" over six years by doctoring earnings so executives could collect hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, federal officials said yesterday in a report that portrayed a company determined to play by its own rules. . . They portray the District-based mortgage funding giant -- a linchpin of the nation's housing market -- as governed by a weak board of directors, which failed to install basic internal controls and instead let itself be dominated and left uninformed by chief executive Franklin Raines and Chief Financial Officer J. Timothy Howard, who both were later ousted. 2005 THE REIGN OF RAINES FALLS MAINLY WITHOUT PAINS ALTHOUGH FRANKLIN RAINES was one of those Washington figures who could do no wrong in the media's eyes - especially the Washington Post - he has plenty to account for, and not just about Fannie Mae. The capital colony of DC was a major victim of the dubious activities of Raines and his institution. RAINES' NAME has long been associated with a local combine that hopes to take over Washington's new baseball team now that the half-billion dollar scandal known as the stadium deal is complete. The proposed purchasers can now boast two partners who have run into serious problems, the other being Nixon aide and Jew-hunter, Fred Malek. A press account reported some time back: "Malek and Kimsey's Washington Baseball Club LLC took form 3 1/2 years ago when attorneys Stephen W. Porter, on behalf of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, and Paul M. Wolff, as chairman of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission's baseball committee, approached Malek. He recruited Kimsey, Joseph E. Robert Jr., whose company deals internationally in commercial real estate, and Fannie Mae chairman and CEO Franklin Raines. According to papers filed with the city, Malek, Kimsey and Robert own equal equity in 85 percent of WBC. Raines, Wolff and Porter own five percent each. . ." HERE'S ANOTHER little known sidelight to Raines: GREG PIERCE, WASHINGTON TIMES, OCT 23 - Donations from 23 executives of mortgage buyer Fannie Mae helped New York Democratic Sen. Charles E. Schumer raise more campaign funds than any of his colleagues in the past quarter, Bloomberg News reports, citing disclosure forms. Mr. Schumer raised $1.7 million in the three months ending Sept. 30 and has $18 million cash on hand for his 2004 re-election campaign, forms filed with the Federal Election Commission show. As a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Mr. Schumer is helping to write legislation that affects Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage buyer, and rival Freddie Mac. A bill designed to strengthen the government-chartered companies' regulation by shifting their oversight from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Treasury Department is stalled in Congress. Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines and Chief Financial Officer J. Timothy Howard, with 21 colleagues, gave a combined $13,750 to Mr. Schumer from July through the past month. Mr. Raines gave $1,000 to Mr. Schumer on July 18, the day after the banking committee held hearings on the company's regulation, FEC records show. OF COURSE RAINES is small potatoes compared with the leader of the ball team combine, Malek, who has also had his troubles with the SEC: WASHINGTON TIMES - Prospective baseball team owner Fred Malek and his District-based investment firm, Thayer Capital Partners, yesterday received $250,000 in fines as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission to resolve a series of fraud charges involving the Connecticut state pension plan. The SEC said Malek and his firm did not disclose the 1998 hiring of a consultant, William A. DiBella, to assist with the investment of $75 million from the Connecticut Retirement and Trust Funds into a private equity fund managed by Thayer. Such hirings must be disclosed by SEC rule to original fund investors, in this case the Connecticut pension plan. Malek received a $100,000 fine and Thayer a $150,000 fine. PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, AUG 2004 - Frederick V. Malek, the man behind the DC baseball bid, was an active member of the Nixon combine, serving among other things as deputy director of CREEP, the aptly named and notorious Committee to Reelect the President. In 1988, Bush chose him to run the Republican Convention but he later had to resign from the campaign after it was learned that he had compiled a list of Jews in the Labor Department as part of a Nixon investigation of a "Jewish cabal." As Nixon's special assistant for personnel, he also was charged with finding ways to use the federal civil service to help Nixon get reelected, for which he was later censured by the Senate Watergate Committee. As the Post reported in 1991, "In a number of memos, some of which he later repudiated, Malek proposed organizing the White House staff and 'politically reliable' officials throughout the federal government down to the sub-agency level." Among his 1972 memos was this choice bit: "All major grants and construction decisions for the next fiscal year were reviewed prior to the finalization of the budgets to ensure to the extent possible they impacted on politically beneficial areas."On August 16, 1971, a memo was drafted at the White House, headed "Dealing with Our Political Enemies. It read in part: "This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active their opposition to the administration. Stated a bit more bluntly - how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."One of the agencies to be used in this manner was the IRS. One of its targets, Pentagon whistleblower Ernest Fitzgerald, would later write, "The agreed-on solution was to lay down the (illegal) law to IRS chief Johnnie Walters. From now on he was to cooperate with White House hatchet man Fred Malek to 'make personnel changes to make IRS responsive to the President' and was to take on discreet political action and investigations himself." The plan didn't work so well with Fitzgerald; his audit showed an overpayment of $1,835.46.Malek also served on the board of the DC-based Palmer National Bank, a private bank with an even more private history. It board included a number of other familiar GOP names and a man known as the "godfather" of the dirty Texas S&Ls. PNB served as banker to the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty in its fund-raising efforts on behalf of Oliver North's gun-running operations in Nicaragua and Iran.Malek has continued to do well, turning up as an advisor to the Carlyle Group, a sort of fiscal home away from home (especially in defense matters) for the well connected In 1990, George W. Bush was asked by Carlyle Group to serve on the board of directors of Caterair, one of the nation's largest airline catering services which it had acquired in 1989. The offer was arranged by Malek. MARC FISHER WASHINGTON POST JAN 5, 2002 - If either Washington or Northern Virginia is ever to get a team - downtown is where sports teams generate the best economic kick, but beggars can't be choosers -we must take four quick steps. . . 3. Get rid of Fred Malek, the main moneyman behind the Washington Baseball Club, the District's ownership group. Malek has the advantages of being hugely rich and hugely connected in both business and politics, including having been co-owner of the Texas Rangers along with President Bush. But Malek is also the guy who did Dick Nixon's anti-Semitic bidding back in 1971, when the unimpeached co-conspirator ordered up a list of members of the "Jewish cabal" who worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Malek, the good soldier, produced the list, and soon enough, some of those Jews found themselves transferred. Malek says that he's no anti-Semite and that he actually refused Nixon's first few requests to produce the list. Maybe in his book that's backbone, but he has no business representing this city in any capacity. AMAZINGLY, during the current furor over the stadium deal, we have not seen a single media mention that future beneficiaries include two individuals - Raines and Malek - who have such troubled records. WHAT IS ALSO NOT widely known was Raines' role in stripping DC of much of its limited home rule powers during the heavily hyped financial crisis of the 90s, which in fact was about the same in real dollars as what the city faced when it first got home rule in 1974. Clinton administration official Raines was at the heart of such schemes as cutting off the city's control over its own prisoners and ripping off its pension fund balance to make the federal budget look a few billion dollars better. DC NEWS SERVICE, 1997 - President Clinton is proposing a financing scheme for DC that would replace a formula based on the equities of the city's relations with the federal government with one based on major and permanent dependency. The Clinton plan would remove the possibility that the city could gain true self-government again and certainly not statehood. It proposes that DC ever more be a financial ward of the national government.Demonstrating that no humiliation is too great to bear provided they are not stripped of their salaries and token status, many elected DC officials are lining up behind the scheme.Two of these plans -- the tax haven scheme and the latest White House proposal -- bear the imprint of Franklin Raines, now the president's budget director but formerly head of Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae is the city's biggest deadbeat thanks to an enormous congressional tax exemption. Raines is close to [DC Delegate] Eleanor Holmes Norton who is already cheering the federal takeover plan.Under the current system, the federal government makes an annual payment that theoretically reflects the cost of services provided by the city and revenues lost due to the federal presence. In 1993 the city estimated this cost to be nearly $2 billion dollars a year. The actual federal payment is one-third that amount and a smaller percentage of the city's revenues that at the beginning of home rule.Because the federal payment is a payment in lieu of taxes rather than a subsidy for servitude, it could easily survive even the granting of statehood. The Clinton scheme, on the other hand, would do away with the federal payment and replace it with a hodgepodge collection of federal takeovers of local functions. The IRS would collect local taxes, the feds would maintain the local road system and the Justice Department would be put in charge of the courts and prisons. Felons would be sentenced under federal guidelines and the convicted would be sent -- in a manner reminiscent of Soviet penal practices -- to federal installations that might be a couple of thousand of miles away from families and friends. [Only the prison change actually occurred - TPR] DC NEWS SERVICE, 1998 - Clinton and [Alice] Rivlin's successor, Franklin Raines, ripped off funds contributed to the DC pension fund in order to create the impression that the federal government had taken over responsibility for this fund. In fact, the feds will spend nothing until they have drained existing contributions down to zero. After that the city is at the mercy of a Congress and a White House that once also promised that Social Security would never be touched and that home rule was forever. . .Not surprisingly, the Clinton plan is being pushed by the erstwhile vice chair of the city's biggest tax deadbeat: Fannie Mae, whose congressional exemption from local taxation costs the city several hundred million a year. Clinton's budget director Franklin Raines, while running Fannie Mae, perfected a scheme for stifling protests against his firm by spreading charitable donations around the city with special attention to those organizations that might make formidable opponents of FM's tax exemption. Raines was also the unofficial budget advisor to the fiscally disastrous [Mayor] Sharon Pratt Kelly, whose one term was harder on the city's finances than all the Barry administrations combined.THE NATION'S DEFENSES COME LATERWe will protect your purchasing power -- Budget director Franklin Raines to a meeting of high-level Pentagon officials. WASHINGTON ICONS AND THE FANNIE MAE SCANDAL WASHINGTON POST, SEP 26 - There are signs the gilt-edged resumes, and political futures, of three former Fannie executives have already been tarnished, because of findings they profited from manipulation of financial results in 1998. Former Fannie Mae chief James A. Johnson, who holds a top post in the Democratic presidential campaign and headed the Kennedy Center and the Brookings Institution; Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lawrence M. Small, who was Fannie Mae's chief operating officer; and Washington lawyer Jamie Gorelick, a former Fannie vice chairman, who has served as deputy attorney general, the Pentagon's top lawyer and a member of the 9-11 commission, joined Raines and Howard in receiving sizable bonuses that year. Regulators allege they were paid after the company improperly deferred other expenses. Johnson, who headed the vice presidential selection process for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), could be the first to feel the fallout. Democratic Party insiders say that Johnson is no longer considered the leading candidate for treasury secretary in a potential Kerry administration. His role as leader of Kerry's transition planning for the White House might also be in jeopardy unless the regulators' allegations are convincingly disputed, they add. "It strikes me those are the most likely outcomes for Johnson," said a senior economic adviser to Kerry, who sought to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals within the campaign. Johnson declined to respond to requests for a comment. Small's mention in the OFHEO report is another in a series of personal missteps that have come to light recently. Earlier this year a federal judge sentenced him to two years' probation and 100 hours of community service for the purchase and possession of 206 art objects made with the feathers of protected species. As the director of the nation's largest complex of museums, Small was also ordered to write a public letter of apology and explanation for his actions. Small, who was Fannie's chief operating officer for eight years, declined to comment on the regulators' report. Gorelick has told friends that she would seriously consider an offer some day to serve as defense secretary, an aspiration that could be harder to achieve if OFHEO's allegations pan out. In an interview, she said, "I have no desire to go back into government in the near term." She added that she had "knocked herself out" on the 9/11 commission and for the time being is "very happy" working as a D.C.-based partner of the law firm Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr. At the same time, Gorelick might be spared because, unlike many of the other former or current officers, her responsibilities at Fannie did not specifically include financial matters. Raines is in the most difficult predicament. In the wake of the regulators' study, Fannie's stock fell 13.4 percent in three days More than any other time in its 36-year history, the District-based company with 4,100 employees in the area finds itself under the microscope. Besides the board-ordered independent internal probe by Rudman, the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an informal inquiry. Members of Congress have promised to look into the matter. And OFHEO has hired Stanley Sporkin, a former federal judge and senior SEC enforcement official, to help them in the continuing examination of Fannie Mae. Raines, budget director in the Clinton White House and chair last year of the Business Roundtable's committee on good corporate governance, now finds himself being criticized by regulators for permitting a corporate culture that made the accounting problems possible. RAMIREZ, LOUISE FRANKLIN Louise Franklin Ramirez, born in 1905, who took part in her last anti-war demonstration February 2003 at the age of 97. Her activism began at the age of 12 when she helped to raise money for Armenian children. In 1946 she wrote Harry Truman warning him of the dangers of atomic power and in her 80s she was gassed while taking part in a demonstration on behalf of an American Indian tribe. She was born in DC, attended DC Central High and graduated from Wilson Normal School in 1927 with a teaching degree. She received her Bachelor's degree from DC Teachers College in 1936, and her Master's degree from Columbia University in 1943. Franklin Ramirez did postgraduate work at Georgetown University, George Washington University, the University of Chicago (where she studied under Bruno Bettelheim), The University of Virginia, Catholic University, and the University of California at Berkeley. She also studied two summers in Mexico under the radical educator Ivan Illich. She taught in the DC school system until the mid 1940s. But she is best remembered for her endless activism which included being arrested dozens of times for nonviolent acts of conscience, including at the Nevada Nuclear Test site at age 91. Louise's most recent arrest was at the Supreme Court in 2000 at age 94 against the death penalty.
Joe Rauh died on September 3, 1992, at the age of 81. For more than half a century, he devoted his life to the fulfillment of the Constitution's great promise of equal justice and freedom for all. No one has ever fought harder or longer for the rights of minorities the disadvantaged and the underdog. Joe Rauh's lifetime of work in the public interest began immediately following his graduation at the top of his class from Harvard Law School and his service as a Supreme Court clerk to Justices Cardozo and Frankfurter. Joe then joined the Roosevelt Administration, where he played an important role in America's mobilizations at the beginning of World War II, until he joined the Army as a commissioned officer in the Pacific. Following the War, Joe entered private law practice with the conviction that "the legal profession affords those who will take it, the opportunity to work in the public interest and the joy that comes with such work." Promptly seizing that opportunity with both fists, Joe was elected as a delegate to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, where he drafted the civil rights plank of the Party's platform for Hubert Humphrey. The concepts embodied in that plank became the foundation for all of the human rights and equal protection laws that have since been enacted. From that time forward, Joe was on the front line as a leader in all of the historic battles to enact those laws and ensure their enforcement. With Clarence Mitchell, Joe represented the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in all the major congressional civil rights battles. He also served for years on the Board of the NAACP and as General Council to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Joe's view of the legal profession never changed: that it should, "Place public interest above private gain"; that its tools should be used "for progress and equality above the defense of the status quo;" and that its guiding principle should be to "make the law a vehicle for righting social wrongs and not perpetuating them." For Joe, the law was just such
a calling. No one has ever held himself to a higher profe During the 1920's and 30's J. Edgar Hoover used to send a G-man over to pick up his favorite chicken sandwich. Bess Truman swore by Reeves' tantalizing strawberry pie in 1940's and early 50's.Lady Bird and Lynda Bird Johnson made wedding plans over tomato surprises in the 60's. Reeves Restaurant and Bakery, was established in 1886, and originally located at 1209 F. Street, N.W. Today it is AT 1306 G NW but remains a Washington institution as well as a strategic source of chocolate chip cookies. Originally opening as a grocery store, Reeves then changed to a teahouse, and finally transformed into its current status as full service restaurant and bakery. Reeves was illuminated with Tiffany lamps and chandeliers above a 100 - foot long cherry wood counter. After closing its doors due to fire Reeves reopened its doors in 1985 only to fall victim to downtown development in 1988. Loyal and some life long customers showed up by the hundreds to say goodbye and savor their final tasty morsels. The original Reeves building was demolished later that year. Reeves was reopened in 1992 two blocks from its old location. The bakery closed in 2007 RFK STADIUM RIGGS BANK JEFF
CLABAUGH, WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - Riggs traces its history back to 1836 when its
predecessor opened as a brokerage house, an early form of banks
in the United States. By 1840, businessmen William Wilson Corcoran
and George Washington Riggs formed a partnership called Corcoran
& Riggs and began offering depository and checking services.
Its first presidential customer was Democrat John Tyler, who
opened at account at Corcoran & Riggs in 1842. RIOTS CULTURAL TOURISM DC - Beverly Snow was one of a number of black entrepreneurs who owned businesses in the downtown area. His success was evidence of the strength of Washington's free black population. One of the sparks for the riot may have been an assault by an enslaved man against Anna Maria Thornton, wife of William Thornton, white architect of the U.S. Capitol. Snow may also have been a target because it was alleged that he spoke disrespectfully about the wives and daughters of white Navy Yard mechanics (working men). One historian suggests that rioters associated Snow with his regular patrons, the wealthy white men who wielded considerable power over the white working classes. Whatever the reason, Snow was forced to flee as an angry white mob took over and ransacked his restaurant. White mobs also attacked school houses and other structures associated with the free black population. FRANCIS SCOTT KEY AND THE SNOW RIOT ANDREW ZONDERMAN - The peak of Maryland’s Know-Nothing gang violence was the election riot of 1857. The riot started on election morning when one of the fire company gangs, the Plug Uglies, took the early morning train from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. The Plug Uglies chose a few polling places to intimidate voters and beat up immigrants especially Irishmen. A few voters stood up against the gang and fought back; some local Know-Nothings joined the gang’s destruction at the polls. The mayor, who was walking a few blocks away, arrived with a group of policemen and tried to calm the mob. President Buchanan was told of the situation. He called for soldiers to quell the disturbance, but was told that there were only around 100 marines that could be summoned fast enough. The next closest force was an artillery company at Fort McHenry. The marines assembled and marched to the riot, where they were surprised to find a group of teenagers and men standing around an old cannon loaded with debris aimed at them. The commander of the marines stood right in front of the cannon and ordered the mob not to fire. The marines then formed three sides of a rectangle and fired on the crowd. The mob pulled back but did not retreat. After the volley the marines quickly fixed their bayonets and charged the mob. The Plug Uglies ran to the train station where there was a train waiting with the marines close on their heels. After the Plug Uglies left, the polls were set up again and by early afternoon voting has resumed. S J ACKERMAN describes the Plug Ugly riot in the August 2001 edition of American History. He summarizes it thus:
STEVE ACKERMAN, VOICE OF THE HILL - Pelted by bricks and sniper fire, the Marines lost discipline when corporal was hit in the jaw with a musket ball, but Tyler managed to stop their retaliatory fire. Then [Marine Commandant] Henderson signaled that it was time take the cannon. Infuriated at the assault on their beloved "Old Man," the Marines charged with bayonets and took the cannon. Tyler formed them into a phalanx to sweep the intersection with gunfire. Northern Liberties Market was a shambles of sheds on present Mount Vernon Square. At the southeast corner, the Plugs placed the cannon, loaded with shrapnel, trained on the polls across 7th Street. Affecting an old-man act, Henderson maneuvered his way toward the fieldpiece, slipping in front of its barrel just as the Marine column marched into range. There he stayed until his men were out of danger and in position. His belly to the muzzle, armed only with an umbrella, Henderson cautioned the Plugs-with noteworthy understatement-"Now, boys, I would think twice before firing on the Marines." . . . All hell broke loose. Three Plugs fired at him. "I don't know whether to consider it a compliment or not," he later quipped. Another thrust a pistol into his face and pulled the trigger. MORE PETER PERLE, WASHINGTON POST - Nobody knows precisely how or where it started, but on a steamy Saturday night, July 19, 1919, the word began to spread among the saloons and pool halls of downtown Washington, where crowds of soldiers, sailors and Marines freshly home from the Great War were taking weekend liberty. A black suspect, questioned in an attempted sexual assault on a white woman, had been released by the Metropolitan Police. The woman was the wife of a Navy man. So the booze-fueled mutterings about revenge flowed quickly among hundreds of men in uniform, white men who were having trouble finding jobs in a crowded, sweltering capital. . . The rampage by about 400 whites initially drew only scattered resistance in the black community, and the police were nowhere to be seen. When the Metropolitan Police Department finally arrived in force, its white officers arrested more blacks than whites, sending a clear signal about their sympathies. It was only the beginning. The white mob - whose actions were triggered in large part by weeks of sensational newspaper accounts of alleged sex crimes by a "negro fiend" - unleashed a wave of violence that swept over the city for four days. Nine people were killed in brutal street fighting, and an estimated 30 more would die eventually from their wounds. More than 150 men, women and children were clubbed, beaten and shot by mobs of both races. Several Marine guards and six D.C. policemen were shot, two fatally. . . The Washington riot was one of more than 20 that took place that summer. With rioting in Chicago, Omaha, Knoxville, Tenn., Charleston, S.C., and other cities, the bloody interval came to be known as "the Red Summer." Unlike virtually all the disturbances that preceded it - in which white-on-black violence dominated - the Washington riot of 1919 was distinguished by strong, organized and armed black resistance, foreshadowing the civil rights struggles later in the century. . . DC RIOTS OLIVIA CADAVAL, EL TIEMPO - In the Latino community of Washington, D.C., the 5 de mayo has become a commemoration of civil resistance. The celebrated battle date coincides with the 1991 disturbances, or riots as some would argue, starting in the Latino neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant. The incident that set off the disturbances was the shooting by a rooky police officer of a Salvadoran man who some witnesses say was staggering toward the officer with his hand raised holding a knife, yet he had just been arrested and handcuffed for drinking in public. A crowd of curious onlookers turned into a bottle- and rock-throwing mob. Police vehicles were set on fire, stores were looted, the police used tear gas and the Immigration and Naturalization service was reported to be on the scene, 'assisting' the police. . . The incident clearly touched a nerve in old and new neighborhood residents who remember the sixties, or who can associate this experience with the Central American turmoil, or who resent the rapidly growing immigrant population, or who live in day-to-day marginality hassled by the police. The Latino community leaders actively challenged the city. They formed the Latino Civil Rights Task, they involved the National Council of La Raza and the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, and the the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. [They] did not miss the significance of the Mexican 5 de mayo, where a ragtag militia resisted an the army of an empire to commemorate civil resistance. http://www.eltiempolatino.com/ ROOT BOY SLIM & THE SEX CHANGE BAND GULLBUY NEW SOUND REVIEW - Root Boy Slim (real name Foster Mackenzie III) graduated from Yale in 1977. Later that same year he debuted his Sex Change Band in DC and the following year, Warner Brothers released his debut album. While never really garnering more than "novelty act" status nationally (due to repeated spins by Dr. Demento), Root Boy Slim had a fiercely loyal (and large) cult following in the DC area. Mackenzie passed away - suffering a fatal heart attack at the age of 47. ST. ELIZABETH'S HOSPITAL
In 1987, the federal government transferred the hospital operations to the DC Department of Mental Health, while retaining ownership of the western campus. The original 1850s building has been designated a National Historic Landmark, but it is not in use because of its state of disrepair. On the grounds of St. Elizabeths, there is also a Civil War cemetery where 300 Union and Confederate soldiers who died here are buried. The Hospital complex is located on a hill in southeast Washington, overlooking the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. However, it is closed to the public. ANGELA VALDEZ, CITY PAPER, 2007 - In 1987, the federal government foisted the struggling [St Elizabeth's] hospital upon the District of Columbia. As compensation for the $120 million yearly cost of running the facility (offset by a declining federal contribution), the feds promised to bequeath to the city the rights to more than 150 acres of the western campus, which could be a valuable parcel in the blooming business of redevelopment. The land was supposed to change hands in 1991. But the feds managed to hold onto the property through a series of land swaps. The Department of Homeland Security is expected to move there in 2011. The 1987 hand-over marked the beginning of a dark period for St. Elizabeths'. Because of a court order requiring a move toward community care, the patient population had plummeted from highs reaching 8,000 in the '60s to fewer than 1,000 in the late '80s. With dwindling funds, the District could barely pay to maintain the crumbling campus. Five different commissioners helmed the faltering system before the hospital went into receivership from 1997 until 2001. WIKIPEDIA - The hospital, founded by Congress in 1852, largely as the result of the efforts of Dorothea Dix, a pioneering advocate for people living with mental illnesses. It opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane, and rose to prominence during the Civil War as it was converted temporarily into a hospital for wounded soldiers. In 1916, its name was officially changed to St. Elizabeths, the colonial-era name for the tract of land on which the hospital was built. The hospital had been casually known by this name since the time of the Civil War, when-in their letters home to loved ones-patients of army hospitals temporarily located on the grounds were reluctant to refer to the institution by its full title. It is speculated that St. Elizabeths has treated over 125,000 patients, though an exact number is not known due to poor recordkeeping. Additionally, thousands of patients are believed to be buried in unmarked graves across the campus, but, again, records for the individuals buried in the graves have been lost. More than 15,000 known autopsies were performed at St. Elizabeths between 1884 and 1982, and a collection of over 1,400 brains preserved in formaldehyde, 5,000 photographs of brains, and 100,000 slides of brain tissue was maintained by the hospital until it was transferred to a museum in 1986. In addition to the mental health patients buried on the campus, several hundred Civil War soldiers are interred there as well. At its peak, the St. Elizabeths campus housed 7,000 patients and employed 4,000 people. Beginning in the 1950s, however, large institutions such as St. Elizabeths were being criticized for hindering the treatment of patients. Community-based healthcare, which included local outpatient facilities and drug therapy, was seen as a more effective means of allowing patients to live near-normal lives. The patient population of St. Elizabeths steadily declined. By 1996, only 850 patients remained at the hospital, and years of neglect had become apparent; equipment and medicine shortages occurred frequently, and the heating system was broken for weeks at a time. By 2002, all remaining patients on the western campus were transferred to other facilities. Although it continues to operate, it does so on a far smaller scale than it once did. The campus of St. Elizabeths sits on bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers in the southeast quadrant of Washington. . . It has many important buildings, foremost among them the Center Building, designed according to the principles of the Kirkbride Plan by Thomas U. Walter (1804-1887), who is perhaps better known as the primary architect of the expansion of the U.S. Capitol that was begun in 1851. THE HOSPITAL'S EARLY MISSION, as defined by its founder, the leading mental health reformer Dorothea Dix, was to provide the "most humane care and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the Army, Navy, and District of Columbia." During the Civil War, wounded soldiers treated here were reluctant to admit that they were in an insane asylum, and said they were at St. Elizabeths, the colonial name of the land where the Hospital is located. Congress officially changed the Hospital's name to St. Elizabeths in 1916. STRIKING PHOTOS FROM THE OLD ST. ELIZABETH'S
SHAW SAM SMITH, WHY BOTHER? - In the wake of the Civil War, this area north of Washington's downtown -- originally occupied by both whites and blacks -- experienced a building boom. With Jim Crow and the coming of the streetcar, whites moved beyond the center city and blacks increasingly found themselves isolated. Until the modern civil rights movement and desegregation, this African-American community was shut out without a vote, without economic power, without access, and without any real hope that any of this would change. Its response was remarkable. For example, in 1886 there were only about 15 black businesses in the area. By 1920, with segregation in full fury, there were more than 300. Every aspect of the community followed suit. Among the institutions created within these few square miles was a building and loan association, a savings bank, the only good hotel in the Washington where blacks could stay, the first full-service black YMCA in the country, the Howard Theatre and two first rate movie palaces. There were the Odd Fellows, the True Reformers, and the Prince Hall Lodge. There were churches and religious organizations, a summer camp, a photography club that produced a number of professional photographers, settlement houses, and the Washington Urban League. Denied access to white schools, the community created a self-sufficient educational system good enough to attract suburban African-Americans students as well as teachers from all over the country. And just to the north, Howard University became the intellectual center of black America. You might have run into Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, or Duke Ellington, all of whom made the U Street area their home before moving to New York. This was a proud community. "We had everything we needed," recalls one older resident. "And we felt good about it. Our churches, our schools, banks, department stores, food stores. And we did very well." The community shared responsibility for its children. A typical story went like this: "There was no family my family didn't know or that didn't know me. I couldn't go three blocks without people knowing exactly where I had been and everything I did on the way. It wasn't just the schools. We learned from everyone. We learned as much from Aunt So-and-So down the street, who was not even related to us." All this occurred while black Washingtonians were being subjected to extraordinary economic obstacles and being socially and politically ostracized. If there ever was a culture entitled to despair and apathy it was black America under segregation. Yet not only did these African-Americans develop self-sufficiency, they did so without taking their eyes off the prize. Among the other people you might have found on U Street were Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston, laying the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement. Years later, while serving on a NAACP task force on police and justice, I would go to a large hall in the organization's headquarters on U Street -- at the same address that was on the 1940s flyers calling for civil rights protests. In that hall, except for the addition of a few plaques, nothing much has changed over the decades. We only needed two tables pushed together so there was plenty of room for the ghosts of those who once sat around such tables asking the same questions, seeking the same solutions, striving for some way for decency to get a foothold. Basic legal strategies for the civil rights movement were planned along this street. Did perhaps Thurgood Marshall or Clarence Mitchell once sit at one end of this hall and also wonder what to do next? Just the question lent courage. With the end of segregation, as free choice replaced a community of necessity, the area around U Street began to change. The black residents dispersed. Eventually the street would become better known for its crime, drugs, and as the birthplace of the 1968 riots. The older residents would remember the former neighborhood with a mixture of pain and pride -- not unlike the ambivalence found in veterans recalling a war. None would voluntarily return to either segregation or the battlefield but many would know that some of their own best moments of courage, skill, and heart had come when the times were at their worst. Some of the people in this community were only a couple of generations away from slavery, some had come from Washington's early free black community. But whatever their provenance, they had learned to become self-sufficient in fact and spirit even as they battled to end the injustices that required them to be so. From an interview Now Governor, what about the charges that there was fraud in the contracts for these improvements and in some of the improvements themselves? Every such charge is a mistake or a lie. As for me, I have a wife and six babies in the house here. I don't purpose that my children shall ever have to acknowledge their father a thief. In point of fact there was no stealing, in my belief, by anybody. Notwithstanding the reckless charges made, no one accusing me has put his finger on a single specific fraud. For three years all the papers relating to the work in every part of the district passed through my hands. I frequently examined more than one thousand papers a day. Thus I kept myself familiar with every detail. In that way I was able to prevent fraud or theft, and to choke scandals which were not kept alive by sheer falsehood.... In former years, when the railroad tracks ran right across Pennsylvania avenue in front of the iron fence which surrounded the old Capitol Park, I had seen the approach to the Capitol blockaded repeatedly by cattle trains, so that carriages full of people in waiting occupied a whole square. So, one night, I organized a gang of men and tore up the track. I did that without authority of law, but it was the right thing to do, and the nuisance would not otherwise have been removed. With similar disregard of red tape I did away with the wretched old market building which stood in the center of what is now Mount Vernon square, at the junction of Seventh Street and Massachusetts Avenue.... The damned old shed was so hideous that it had to come down, and I so notified the proper authorities. They immediately engaged counsel and arranged for an injunction the next day. I heard of this in season and got a friend to take the old judge then in the city out for a drive. I told him to return late. The judge went with my friend. While they were away I pulled the market down."  REMAINS OF BOSS SHEPHERD'S HACIENDA IN MEXICO COPPER CANYON - Batopilas is considered the "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" because of it's historic past and present beauty. . . The silver mines of Batopilas were some of the richest in Mexico. In the 18th and 19th century both Spaniards and Mexicans gained great wealth out of the area. American John Robinson purchased an old claim in 1861 which turned out to have a large, hidden vein. He decided to sell the claim to fellow American Alexander Shepherd for $600,000 US in 1880. Alexander Shepherd was the last mayor of Washington, D.C. and had been ousted under unproven corruption charges. Once Shepherd moved his family to Batopilas, he filed over 350 mining claims and formed the Batopilas Mining Company. His mines became some of the wealthiest in the world at their peak. Noting the difficulty and time (over eight days) of transporting the silver ore to Chihuahua, Shepherd opened his own facilities and foundry along the river at his Hacienda San Miguel. Over 20 million ounces of silver were extracted from the mines, and this great wealth allowed Shepherd to bring cultural events and technological advances to this once sleepy town. Batopilas was the second city in Mexico to have electricity. His hydroelectric works provide the towns power still and he also built an aqueduct which is still in use today. So famous for it's wealth were Shepherd's mines that Pancho Villa once robbed a mule shipment of $40,000 US in silver bars. Alexander Shepherd died in 1902, leaving the mines to his sons who ceased operation in 1920, although other miners would later try unsuccessfully to restart the old mines. [From a discussion on the DC History bulletin board] FRED JORDAN, WOODBERRY FOREST SCHOOL, VA - As a secondary school teacher, a student of mine asked today whether Washington D.C. had ever had any political bosses along the lines of William Marcy Tweed or George Washington Plunkitt in New York or James Michael Curly in Boston. I had to confess my ignorance, coupled with the speculation that since the system of local government which Tweed and his like dominated was largely absent in the federal city, bosses like him would not have appeared. (One might, I suppose, consider the Congress to have been dominated by its own political bosses at the time, thus making someone like Marc Hanna the de facto "boss" of Washington D.C., but that struck us all as a bit of a stretch.) However, I thought it worth the time to pass his question on to the list. Can anyone help me out here? KATE MASUR - The most famous, and maybe the only, "boss" in Washington's history was Alexander Shepherd. He was a contemporary of Tweed's, and many people compared the two men. In fact, a lot of Washingtonians who didn't like Shepherd claimed he was WORSE than Tweed. Shepherd was basically run out of town after he spent gobs of money on municipal improvements and was embroiled in a corruption scandal. Then his reputation was revived at the end of the 19th century, when people began to believe that he had been a visionary urban planner and point out that he had never actually been convicted of any wrongdoing. MICHAEL WASSERMAN - I agree with what Kate Masur wrote on this subject. For clarity, though, I think it is important add that before the so-called "Territorial" government, residents of the cities of Georgetown and Washington each elected their own local governments, including the legislative and executive branches, without federal involvement. While those municipal governments did not have quite as large powers as the 1871 government were given, they were still significant. The 1871 Act abolished all the local governments of the District and devolved somewhat expanded powers upon officials who mainly appointed by the President. It is something of misnomer to refer to the 1871 Government as "Territorial"--the act establishing the 1871 Government does not contain the word "Territorial" and the word was in fact stricken from an earlier draft of the bill. Moreover, as enacted, the law gave the new government powers that were substantially more limited, as well as divided among more boards and officials, than in the case of real Territorial governments. SAM SMITH - Like so many things with DC, we are underrated on our bosses. . . .Alexander Shepherd was in many ways in the 19th century urban political tradition of Tweed and Plunkett et al. . . . A big difference, however, was the lack of a new immigrant population from which to draw his base. Further, the Shepherd period was of minimal democratic opportunity and thus the relation between the citizen and the boss was quite different. But the spirit and many of the techniques were the same, including public works helping both one's friends and the city, and a populist appeal that did not go well in elite circles. At least one paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, thought Tweed and his gang were 'stupid sneak thieves' next to Shepherd. Here's something I wrote about it some years back for the City Paper: SAM SMITH, CITY PAPER - DC's territorial government was short-lived, but misconceptions about its nature thrive to this day. Many of these center on the powerful Board of Public Works. This body was not part of the territorial government at all, but a separate entity reporting directly to Congress. Its chair was actually the governor, but Henry Cooke was not interested enough to attend meetings, so power devolved on the vice chair, the famous Alexander Shepherd who functioned as CEO. Shepherd, the single most interesting political figure in DC history, had an instinctive flair for the use of power, with or without the law to back him up. With a combination of style, chutzpah, political instinct, decisiveness, charm, friendship with President Grant, amorality and arrogance, he would become the father of modern Washington planting thousands of trees, laying miles of sewers and paving more miles of streets over them. Governor Cooke had the title but lacked the inclination to compete. A joke at the time said the governor was like a sheep because he was led around by "A. Shepherd." Boss Shepherd's persuasive skills were such that upon being called to account by the president of a railroad whose tracks on the Mall had been torn up one night by 200 of Shepherd's men, he left the meeting with an offer to become the line's vice president. His cunning was such that when he heard reports of a planned injunction against the removal of what he called a "wretched old market building" on Mt. Vernon Square, he got a friend to take the one judge currently in the city out for a long ride in the country while the Boss accomplished his mission. He not only makes Marion Barry's later efforts at urban manipulation seem amateurish, he with at the top of American city bosses. As the Cincinnati Enquirer of the time put it: "Boss Tweed and his gang, to whom Shepherd's enemies are so given to comparing him, were vulgar villians [sic], stupid sneak thieves, by the side of this remarkable man." Cooke eventually resigned as governor and Shepherd took his place. Shortly thereafter, in 1874, Congress replaced the territorial government with a system of absolute non-democratic control under three appointed commissioners. Once again, the proximate cause of this change involved the coalescing of issues of purse and prejudice. To be sure, the city had run up a cost overrun of $13 million -- Shepherd said he assumed the federal government would take care of it -- and the national financial panic of 1873 had put everyone on edge. But Shepherd had also demonstrated the considerable nascent political clout of black Washingtonians with a referendum on the right of the territorial government to issue bonds. The vote wasn't necessary -- the courts had already given the territory authority -- but Shepherd encouraged the referendum anyway. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor, to the displeasure of the city's white property owners. Just to be on the safe side, according to later recollections by the boss's own secretary, blacks were brought in from Prince George's County to add to the tally. The secretary said that despite their ignorance of the issues involved, the seconded voters had done the city a great service. "The darkies were always good friends of mine," Shepherd boasted to the New York World. The local white establishment, however, felt otherwise and while only a few -- such as the Georgetown newspaper -- would say so publicly, many felt that loss of enfranchisement was a necessary price to pay for what a southern senator would later describe as getting "rid of this load of negro suffrage that was flooding in." Incidentally, Shepherd, according to Nelson Rimensyder, wrote the president of Howard in 1871: "I am lopposed to any discrimination on account of race or color in the schools or elsewhere." And in 1877, Frederick Douglass said in a speech, "I want to thank Governor Shepherd for the fair way in which he treated the colored race when he was in a position to help them." ALAN LESSOFF, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY- In 2002, I published a profile of Shepherd. . . I also tried to clear up a few myths, for example why Shepherd's reputation recovered so quickly when his program was so wracked by influence peddling and reckless, unaccountable management and how he ended up managing silver mines in Mexico. It is flat untrue that he fled there. He went to Mexico in 1880, temporarily he imagined, in an effort to rebuild his fortune after going bankrupt in DC real estate in November 1876, well over two years after his ouster as territorial governor. Until he left, he remained visible and active in DC politics. He and his supporters felt that he had nothing to be ashamed of, let alone flee from -- on the contrary. He was never seriously threatened with indictment, even in the so-called Safe Burglary Conspiracy of 1874, which got his associate and Grant's aide Orville Babcock indicted, though never convicted. Political scientists have long debated what defines a "boss" by comparison to other sorts of politicians. I have always argued that Shepherd was not really a boss in the political science sense of the term, since the term implies, in my view, someone who is primarily a politician, when Shepherd was a promoter and developer whose ambitions for Washington's physical embellishment led him into city and national politics. More important, the term "boss" implies a power-broker with a base in ward-level electoral politics, and the whole point of the territorial government Shepherd helped to devise and mainly ran was to free public works, his main interest, from electoral pressures, especially at the neighborhood level. I think from a political science perspective Marion Barry would count more as a boss than Shepherd, since Barry devoted enormous attention to using DC jobs, services, and contracts to building a reliable electoral base. That's more typical boss behavior. For Shepherd, public works were the main show, and his electoral manipulations were meant to facilitate them. . . On the other hand, the impulse to develop a disciplined model of the urban boss and of machine politics is a product of political science from the early-twentieth century. In the 1870s "boss" was a loosely used political epithet that implied widespread influence peddling and cronyism, generally through the vehicle of party. Shepherd certainly qualified on that score. In my book I attempted with mixed success to trace the proportion of projects under the Board of Public Works that went to close associates; I came up with 20% as a very low figure, a great deal, considering the huge scale of Shepherd's Comprehensive Plan improvements and the fact that they drew contractors from around the country. Partisan politics and Republican factionalism largely explains the application of the term, "boss" to Shepherd, since Democrats were gleeful to have a chance to distract attention from Tweed, in his period the prototype of urban boss, while anti-Grant Republicans wanted to emphasize what they perceived as the irresponsibility, crudeness, and corruption that flourished within Grant's circle. . . In sum, I would not try to explain Shepherd to students as an example of boss politics, because that, I believe, distracts from the urban, fiscal, governmental, and racial issues that produced him and encouraged his methods. "Boss" makes him a figure of a colorful past, but the recent experience of DC's default and the Control Board emphasizes how the structural problems that Shepherd attempted to overcome through bullying and influence peddling remain very much alive. FURTHER FUN FACTS ABOUT BOSS SHEPHERD Improvements by Boss Shepherd's Board of Public Works - 260 miles of road grade;
118 paved Cost overrun on projects:
320% Amount spent by city on
capital improvements 1802-1871 - $13,000,000 Governor Shepherd supported
and advocated laws that prohibited Shepherd also opposed
the segregation of public schools, but Congress [Nelson Rymensnyder: Governor Alexander Robey Shepherd] SLANG Here are some slang or local expressions believed to be unique to DC or to have been invented here: - ANCs SLAVERY RUBY L. BAILEY, DETROIT FREE PRESS - In all, 400 Africans held in slavery made up roughly half of the workforce that built the White House and the Capitol. . . During the construction, enslaved Africans lived in shanties and huts on G and F streets, today major downtown streets. veryone worked from dawn until dusk, everyday except Sunday. Instead of pay, enslaved blacks received a blanket and cornmeal, which was used to make bread, historians said. SLEEPY SOUTHERN TOWN Description used by strangers who don't know DC history. See "Swamp" for more. SLUG ETIQUETTE SLUGS DO NOT TALK. This is not completely true, because there are times when conversation is acceptable, but normally slugs must wait for drivers to initiate it; otherwise, there is no talking. One note about this rule. Even though it may sound impolite not to initiate conversation, there are some good reasons why this rule exists. The driver (and sometimes the slug) isn't interested in getting to know the other person. On the contrary, all that is wanted is a quiet ride home. For many riders, it's a chance to think, sleep, or read the paper. For the driver, it may be the only chance to listen to the news or relax to his or her own music. The last thing both riders and drivers want is to feel obligated to carry on a 30-minute conversation. NO CONVERSATIONS OF RELIGION, POLITICS, OR SEX. NO MONEY, GIFTS, OR TOKENS OF APPRECIATION ARE EVER OFFERED OR REQUESTED. CELL PHONES - Slugs, do not carry on a conversation while commuting. The very short, "Hey, I'm on my way" is okay, but do not have a long conversation about what you did last weekend! THE LINE DOES NOT LEAVE A WOMAN STANDING ALONE. Call it chivalry or simply thoughtfulness towards the safety of others, but this rule has certainly helped many women feel safer. A SLUG DOES NOT ASK TO CHANGE THE RADIO STATION OR ADJUST THE HEAT OR AIR CONDITIONING. Normally, the slug does not open or close the window. BOTH SLUGS AND DRIVERS USUALLY EXCHANGE A "THANK YOU" BEFORE AND AFTER THE RIDE. SLUGS SHOULD NEVER TAKE A RIDE OUT OF TURN. Slugs have the right to pass or forfeit a ride if they do not like a particular car NO "BODY SNATCHING." If the line of cars picking up slugs is too long, many times drivers will cruise the commuter parking lots, attempting to pick up slugs walking to the line. DRIVERS SHOULD NOT "STOP SHORT." Stopping short happens when the driver decides not to take the slug all the way to the agreed-upon destination. SEAT BELTS - It's understood that both drivers and passengers should buckle-up. BUTCH SNIPES
During a time when drug dealers invaded the area and Metrorail construction tore up the streets, Mr. Snipes sponsored canned food drives for the needy, supported the Boys Club, volunteered at schools, coached athletic teams and founded and served as president of the Shaw Business and Professional Association. Somewhere along the way, people began calling him "the mayor of U Street.". . . After he retired in 1997, the outgoing and loquacious Mr. Snipes often made appearances during historic tours of the Shaw area. SNOW THOMAS V. DIBACCO, WASHINGTON TIMES - The blizzard in March 1888 marred a Washington weekend, with Sunday as the focal point. . . The 1888 storm was swift. By midnight it was over. . . A heavy northwest wind dropped the temperature to 20 degrees, and the scene moved one writer to write: "Ice-laden trees ... looked like huge ghosts as they waved their withered branches violently in the wind. A more cheerless night could not have been imagined." Everything seemed to come down. First, the electric wires, leaving Pennsylvania Avenue "as dark as a suburban street." Then the telegraph lines snapped, crackled and popped, especially on B Street, from Sixth to Ninth streets. . . Associated Press stories could not be transmitted, and testy reporters got the cold shoulder from telegraph employees. Said one, "If you have been outside, you know as much about the weather as we do." . . . The only train from New York City that made it to Washington was a record 12 hours late. 1910 - City commissioners estimate that it will take 12,000 men to clear away a 3 inch snowfall from an estimated 550 miles of paved sidewalks. 1917 - City commissioners estimate that it will take 50,115 men and 19,162 horse teams to clear a six inch snowfall. The Street Cleaning Department has 350 men and 90 teams. 1922 - As more than two feet of snow fell on the city, collapsing the roof of the Knickerbocker theatre at 18th and Columbia Road during the performance of a George M Cohan comedy. The Washington Post reported:
WASHINGTON POST, 1979 - The greatest snowstorm in more than half a century left the Washington area smothered under almost two feet of snow yesterday -- a magnificent white menace that virtually imprisoned the city and sent road crews battling to reopen streets for this morning's commuters. A total of 18.7 inches of snow fell Sunday and early yesterday -- the greatest single snowfall since a 28-inch storm collapsed the roof of the Knickbocker Theater in January 1922. Wind-blown drifts piled up to three and four feet deep in the District and to six and seven feet in the suburbs, covering familiar landmarks in a white blanket. The storm came on top of additional snow already on the ground, bringing the total accumulation to 23.6 inches. . . The near blizzard, its ferocity miscalculated by stunned forecasters, triggered mammoth disruptions. National, Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International airports all were closed. Amtrak trains limped in hours late. Metro abandoned city bus service early yesterday, and Metro trains never ran at all. Hospitals were
short staffed. Some were running low on food and other supplies.
Cars were marooned, turning to shapeless white hulks on the streets.
Police and other emergency vehicles could not answer some emergency
calls, and had great difficulty answering others. A massive snowball fight involving some 500 people erupted at Dupont Circle. It ended on a sour note, however, when a truck driver confronted the crowd, complaining that members of the crowd had smashed his windshield with snowballs loaded with stones or other weights. Police arrived and dispersed the crowd. . . Mayor Marion Barry was in Florida on vacation yesterday and could not be reached for comment. MILTON COLEMAN, WASHINGTON POST, February 22, 1979 - Mayor Marion Barry sat casually in the back seat as his chauffeured black sedan rambled along the streets of northwest Washington yesterday to the clumpety-clump accompaniment of the tire chains on the rear wheels. Barry stared straight ahead. He rarely looked down the occasional snow-clogged side streets. He appeared to hardly notice the truck in front whose rear end wigwagged in the slippery slush. He did not glance at the occasional pedestrians who lined up at downtown street corners to tiptoe along the narrow footpaths through the banks of snow. The mayor is not dealing with this snow problem personally. He said he is confident that the chore is being capably handled by his two right-hand men -- city administrator Elijah B. Rogers and general assistant Ivanhoe Donaldson. It is not a job for the city's elected leader. "What's to lead? It's not a crisis," Barry said. "That's why you've got all these staff people around. "There are more important things for me to worry about than snow -- housing, (the) supplemental budget. When you have a good team, you don't have to get involved in everything. . . If people got as excited about the housing problem and about unemployment as they did about snow, maybe we'd get something done. This is going to go away in some days.". . . What about the people who could not dig out their cars, or tried digging once only to have the cars plowed back in? the mayor was asked. How would they get to work? "Take a bus," he said gruffly. The buses were not running in the morning. "They can walk."
MORE SNYDER, MITCH
Snyder’s singular commitment to the nation’s poor and homeless put him on a collision course with then President Ronald Reagan. Snyder and CCNV gained access to an abandoned, federal building, eight blocks from the Capitol and used it for what was intended to be a temporary, winter shelter for the homeless. When CCNV and those homeless staying at the shelter refused to leave in the spring, a confrontation lasting nearly a year began. It culminated with Snyder engaging in a fast which he declared would be "until death" or until the federal government agreed to provide sufficient funding to operate a shelter in the nation’s capital that would be model for the rest of America. Snyder’s fast lasted over fifty days. The public sympathy resulting from it convinced President Reagan to approve funding for the shelter Snyder and CCNV demanded. The story of that confrontation was eventually produced as a made for T.V. movie, Samaritans: The Mitch Snyder Story, in the Spring of 1986. . . In October of 1989 the movement that Snyder helped create brought over 140,000 people to Washington to demand increased federal support for affordable housing. Less than a year after that march on Washington Snyder was dead. He committed suicide in July of 1990. Most agree that Snyder took his life because of a string of defeats-locally in D.C. and nationally-which left him depressed and disillusioned about the prospects for success for the movement he helped create and guided. SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLEANSING [Here are a few of the groups of people, businesses, and other institutions that have been chased from DC thanks to city policies, along with some of their causes] CHILDREN - Declining quality of schools and recreation combined with gentrification. DOWNTOWN SMALL BUSINESSES - City zoning and planning policies stripped downtown of a varied commercial district. MODERATE PRICED HOTELS - The city government was long disinterested in hotels, especially the cheaper ones, and weighted its planning towards office structures that could replace them, even though the hotels made far more economic sense. Metro also encouraged these hotels to move out of town. TOURISTS - They followed the cheaper hotels out of town. BUSINESSES - Metro, although touted as an economic boon, actually helped the city lose businesses which could relocate on cheaper land in the suburbs and still have easy access to downtown. GENERAL POPULATION - Metro also encouraged the general depopulation of the city since you could use it when you wanted, but at less cost, by moving to the suburbs. CHINATOWN - In the process of being eradicated thanks to the development around the MCI center. CHURCHES - Being forced out due to inadequate parking caused by nearby overdevelopment. SOLBERG, ANDREW MAGGIE HALL, HILL RAG - Capitol Hill is getting a new "top cop." [Andrew Solberg] has a degree in theology, a master's in philosophy, is a big fan of Aristotle and his idea of a good read is Greek poetry. . . Turns out he was a late entrant into the police force because he was busy bumming-out in Mexico, Guatemala and earning a dollar as a New Orleans-based deck-hand on a Mississippi tug. Broke and wandering what to do with his life he arrived in DC with $40 in his pocket and promptly had his beat-up old van clamped and towed. . . Spent a year, as a high school student in Bologna, Italy, followed by a season playing basketball for Moscow University, and then traveled in India. Next month, Inspector Solberg celebrates his first year at the First District sub-station, opposite Marion Park, on E Street, SE. Because he refuses to spend much time behind his desk, he's become a familiar figure on the Hill. . . Every Wednesday morning he's on special-duty. He reads to fourth graders at the Friendship Edison Charter School, on Potomac Avenue, SE. Currently the book is Alex Hailey's classic Roots. . . He confesses that he and the kids, are not making a lot of progress, in the reading department that is. Much of the hour is spent chatting, as he pauses often to ask the children what they think of what they've just heard. They express their views and in so doing open-up to him. He listens, he talks, they have a giggle and exchange knowing nods. He believes what he's doing is an investment in the future. . . After his gig on the mighty Mississippi, he decided that the fire service was his future. But the city was not hiring. So he switched his attention to the police department. But it was no-go there too. Not because it didn't need officers - but because he was "medically unfit." Strange jargon, for a strange "condition" that initially got him barred from the force. Solberg was too tall! At 6'8", he exceeded the cut-off height by three inches. He set about changing the archaic, bizarre, peculiar-to-DC, law. He wrote to every member of the City Council, pointing out the stupidity of the situation. He recalls: "I told them: you know what, I could be a police officer if I was gay, Jewish, left-handed, Hindu, or whatever. But you're discriminating against me because I am tall. There's no purpose to this law. In the end they said I was right. But it was a convoluted process." It was 1987 before Solberg was allowed into the police academy. . . Raised in Urbana, Illinois, Solberg's father lectured in American history, his mother taught fifth grade, his older sister is an art historian in Italy and his younger sister a criminal-defense lawyer. . . He got a degree in religion
from Haverford College, a liberal arts college outside Philadelphia.
With no burning ambition in any special direction he went to
New Orleans, simply because he had a pal there he could crash
with. . .
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS - After the heartbreaking death of his son Willie, Abraham Lincoln and his family fled the gloom that hung over the White House, moving into a small cottage outside Washington, on the grounds of the Soldiers' Home, a residence for disabled military veterans. In Lincoln's Sanctuary, historian Matthew Pinsker offers a portrait of Lincoln's stay in this cottage and tells the story of the president's growth. Lincoln lived at the Soldiers' Home for a quarter of his presidency, and for nearly half of the critical year of 1862, but most Americans (including many scholars) have not heard of the place. Indeed, this is the first volume to specifically connect this early "summer White House" to key wartime developments, including the Emancipation Proclamation, the firing of McClellan, the evolution of Lincoln's "Father Abraham" image, the election of 1864, and the assassination conspiracy. Through a series of striking vignettes, the reader discovers a more accessible Lincoln, demonstrating what one visitor to the Soldiers' Home described as his remarkable "elasticity of spirits." At his secluded cottage, the president complained to his closest aides, recited poetry to his friends, reconnected with his wife and family, conducted secret meetings with his political enemies, and narrowly avoided assassination attempts. Perhaps most important, he forged key friendships that helped renew his flagging spirits. The cottage became a refuge from the pressures of the White House, a place of tranquility where Lincoln could refresh his mind. SOURCE THEATER WASHINGTON POST - The Source Theatre Company, which provided a home for experimental plays and fledging artists for more than 28 years, has ceased operations and agreed to sell its building. Source had been struggling financially for several years and has received almost $1 million in public funds. . . In 1977, Source was one of the first arts groups to move back to the 14th Street corridor. . . In its active years, Source produced five plays a season. It created the annual Washington Theatre Festival, which has developed more than 700 plays since 1981. . . Over the years, Source was nominated for 30 Helen Hayes Awards. 2/06 SOUTHWEST URBAN RENEWAL SAM SMITH, MULTITUDES - I was sent to interview a woman who was refusing to move out of her house in the Southwest urban renewal area. Hundreds of acres had been leveled around her and still she clung on like a survivor of the Dresden carpet bombing. The project, the largest in the nation, had begun in April 1954 and five years later some 550 acres had been cleared. Only 300 families remained to be relocated. More than 20,000 people and 800 businesses had been kicked out to make way for the plan. Some 80% of the latter never went back into operation. The design was hailed by planners and liberals; a 1955 report for the District was titled No Slums in Ten Years. Not everyone was so sanguine, however. In a 1959 report of the National Conference of Catholic Charities, the Rt. Rev. Msg. John O'Grady said, "It is sad. It is not urban renewal; it is a means of making a few people rich. Instead of improving housing conditions, it is shifting people around from one slum to another." The Supreme Court disagreed. In 1954 it had upheld the underlying law and in a decision written by none other than William O. Douglas, declared:
JUDY COLEMAN, DCIST - Berman v. Parker, challenging this slum-clearing initiative, reached the Supreme Court in 1954, nine years after the plan was announced. A black storeowner in the area challenged the action as unconstitutional. The claim, though, was not related to racism or equal protection violations. Instead, the plaintiff sued because slum-clearing didn't pass muster as a "public use" under the Fifth Amendment. We all want pretty neighborhoods, the plaintiff argued, but you have to show something more to take my property. The court rejected this argument and, in doing so, blew the door wide open for future uses of eminent domain. As long as the government could show that it was improving the public welfare, it could use the hammer of eminent domain to nail just about any land it wanted. . . Further, the court found it plausible, as many policymakers did at the time, that the problem of urban blight could be solved by nothing short of a total redesign. "Public use," under the Fifth Amendment meant a "public purpose," which in turn meant just about anything government wanted to do. STATE THINGS
  A DC TRANSIT SNOWSWEEPER   SWAMP We have established a swamp police squad whose job it will be to reduce the epidemic of press mentions of Washington once having been a swamp-filled town. The first violator apprehended by this squad is Ann Gerhart of the Washington Post who, in the course of a crudely chipper Style article on Bush's war against the civil services, describes its founding in 1883 adding that it "built Washington, helping to transform a swampy, mosquito-infested river town into a colossus of power." Not only is there no evidence that the 19th century civil service drained any swamps or sprayed DDT within them, the swamps didn't even exist. Those places were marshes, typical of river shorelines, and precisely the sort of setting people who call Washington "swampy" pay large sums of money to put their weekend condo next to or contribute to environmental groups to save elsewhere around the country. These legends seem to be promulgated mainly by those who believe that Washington did't amount to much until they got here. We also suspect that those from New York City are heavily to blame, having to find something derogatory about Washington once it got some bagel shops. Our position has always been that a city that has to brag about its bagels doesn't have much going for it. For the record, one way you tell a swamp from a marsh is that the former has trees as in Pogo's Okeefenoke Swamp. There was nothing like that in DC. - The Review, 2/05 SWAMPOODLE The neighborhood was called Swampoodle and the Irish who lived there apparently picked the name because they thought they were living in a swamp but the Irish didn't have any swamps in the homeland and so can be forgiven. In fact, it was just a bit marshy around the Tiber Creek. As Richard Layman has described it in the |
RAUH, JOE
ssional code or
lived life more in keeping with it. Nor has any lawyer bestowed
greater honor on his profession. Selflessly and wholeheartedly,
Joe practiced law as an instrument of beneficent change, whether
seeking justice for minorities, women, senior citizens and children;
defending individual liberties against the encroachments of McCarthyism;
fighting for union democracy or vindicating other infringements
of basic human rights. In these historic battles, Joe appeared
before the Supreme Court 16 times during the course of his 40
years of public interest law practice. But Joe did not limit
his public interest work to court battles. He fought for equal
justice in legislation, in the confirmation process of Supreme
Court nominees, in labor unions and in the Democratic Party.
- 
REEVES BAKERY
NIH - Established in 1855 as the Government
Hospital for the Insane, St. Elizabeths Hospital has had a distinguished
history in the treatment of the mentally ill. The Hospital's
early mission, as defined by its founder, the leading mental
health reformer Dorothea Dix, was to provide the "most humane
care and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the
Army, Navy, and District of Columbia." During the Civil
War, wounded soldiers treated here were reluctant to admit that
they were in an insane asylum, and said they were at St. Elizabeths,
the colonial name of the land where the Hospital is located.
Congress officially changed the Hospital's name to St. Elizabeths
in 1916. By the 1940s, the Hospital complex covering an area
of over 300 acres housed 7,000 patients. It was the first and
only federal mental facility with a national scope.
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