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Can historians help defuse gentrification conflicts?

My latest article on the conflicts that arise in gentrifying neighborhoods when bike lanes are proposed has been published in the National Council on Public History’s History@Work site. Over the past...

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Holding onto the Bible and the land

Yesterday the District of Columbia Department of Transportation held a public meeting to share revised alternatives for proposed protected bicycle lanes in the city’s Shaw neighborhood. The meeting...

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DC’s first tiny house movement was in the 1880s

Last fall, Washington, D.C., Councilmember Vincent Orange (At-Large) proposed building 1,000 “tiny houses” for low-income residents and millennials. His bill — “The Minimum Wage, Living Wage, and...

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Two Dukes, one building, and a whole lot of speculation

Curious coincidence? About 1913 young Edward “Duke” Ellington began hanging out in a pool hall operated by Frank Holliday in a building in the 600 block of T Street NW owned by Washington, D.C....

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The curious history of Bladensburg’s Spa Spring

Open spaces are important parts of the cultural landscape. The Washington region is chock full of parks with histories as magnificent as the settings with which they are associated. The National Mall...

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Washington’s Bloomingdale neighborhood tackles gentrification using history

One of the greatest injustices in South of Market redevelopment has been the callous obliteration of its past. — Chester Hartman, Yerba Buena: Land Grab and Community Resistance in San Francisco (San...

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Fake art and the right to stay put

This poster is one of three affixed to a boarded-up storefront in Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia neighborhood. The storefront, like many other properties in this community East of the Anacostia River, is...

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The Gold Dust Twins repurposed

A few years back I wrote about a ghost sign exposed in Atlanta by a tornado. It was a “Gold Dust Twins” sign that had been painted on a building facade that had subsequently been concealed by the...

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The kernel of truth in Trayon White’s conspiracy theories

Washingtonians lay claim to an urban legend called “The Plan.” It’s a conspiracy theory-rumor-urban legend that has circulated among the District’s African American residents for decades. Basically,...

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Performative security on Capitol Hill

Back in 2015 I wrote an article about security at the Library of Congress. I am reposting the article here because it is relevant to the January 6, 2021, insurrection that took place at the U.S....

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