Opinion: Friendship Heights has a chance to begin to rectify its racist past
By Aaron L. Alexander, Ledlie Laughlin, Hannah Goldstein, Doug Robinson-Johnson and Molly Blythe Teichert February 18, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. EST Washington Post
Aaron L. Alexander is a rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation. Ledlie Laughlin is a pastor at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church. Hannah Goldstein is a rabbi at Temple Sinai. Doug Robinson-Johnson is a pastor at National United Methodist Church. Molly Blythe Teichert is a pastor at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church. The writers lead congregations that are members of the Washington Interfaith Network and the Washington Interfaith Network Ward 3 Congregations Affordable Housing Work Group.O
This year, city planners, residents and landowners will come together to consider the future of Friendship Heights — the area around Wisconsin Avenue NW and the Maryland border. That effort, led by the Office of Planning as part of an extensive planning exercise for commercial corridors in Rock Creek West, should be driven by the need to repair past wrongs and to move toward a more equitable and dynamic future.
The area draws its name from a 3,124-acre parcel — Friendship — granted by Charles Calvert to James Stoddert and Thomas Addison in 1713. The name reflected the friendship of the families. Much of Friendship remained sleepy until the early 1900s and the arrival of the streetcar.
Infrastructure investments always shape residential development, and the early D.C. streetcars were no exception. They launched an era of “suburban” development in upper Northwest, including Friendship Heights, in the first half of the 20th century.
Housing opportunities in upper Northwest in that era were reserved for White people; African Americans were actively excluded and, where present, were effectively expelled at places such as Reno between Woodrow Wilson High School and Alice Deal Middle School and the area around Lafayette Elementary School.
Meanwhile, the Friendship Heights area, as outlined in the extraordinary scholarship of Neil Flanagan and Kimberly Bender, offered a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been and now must be. In 1906, four bold African American men — Alexander Satterwhite, Michel Dumas, James Neill and Charles Cuney — formed the Belmont Syndicate and purchased a parcel of land on the Maryland side of Friendship Heights. They marketed lots to both White and African American purchasers.
In the area known as Friendship, the response was anything but friendly. One White resident explained:No Negro shall ever build a house at Belmont. I speak for 500 men as determined as myself. We do not care what methods are needed to prevent a calamity which appears to be impending. Whatever they are those methods will be taken. To establish a negro colony at Belmont, practically at our doors and beyond the restraint of the District police force, would mean the impairment of our property values, a constant menace to our peace and security and the destruction of the happiness of our homes.
The Belmont Syndicate’s visionary effort was ultimately foiled, and the area remained, as it was intended to be by Francis Newlands and his Chevy Chase Land Company, segregated and affluent. Newlands, who tried to strip African Americans of the vote and casually referred to African Americans as a “race of children,” opined:History teaches that it is impossible to make homogenous people by the juxtaposition upon the same soil of races differing in color. Race tolerance, under such conditions, means, ultimately, race war and mutual destruction or the reduction of one race to servitude.
Sadly, in the first half of the 20th century, Newlands’s segregated, economically exclusive vision became a reality.
Even today, few African Americans make their home in Friendship Heights (or many of the neighborhoods of upper Northwest). Today’s residents of Friendship Heights do not hold the views of their predecessors 100 years ago, but the die of racial and economic segregation cast in the first half of the 20th century remains.
We come from different faith traditions, but we share an obligation to revisit the past to understand more fully our present and seed a different future. A future that, though recognizing our differences, transparently honors our shared humanity. For the moral fiber of any community is not necessarily determined by what its members believe in private (though that’s important), but by who and what its policies promote in public. Where there is a wrong, we are obligated to fix it. Where there is an opportunity to do right, we want to seize it.
And, happily, in Friendship Heights we have such an opportunity. The upcoming planning process offers a moment for repair. Friendship Heights became what it is today through concerted action. And concerted action is required now to create opportunities for African Americans as the Belmont Syndicate sought to do more than 100 years ago.
Over the years, there has been significant opposition to change in Friendship Heights. In the coming planning process, we hope neighbors and landowners will embrace change and together bend the arc. It is imperative that any resulting plan significantly move off the status quo.
Our planners must call for using public lands to build affordable housing and maximizing affordable housing on private land. We must provide affordable housing for teachers, firefighters, police and other hard-working Washingtonians who want to live in Friendship Heights and enjoy its plentiful amenities, as well as deeply affordable homes for those who labor in the upper Northwest’s retail and service sectors. We also need to create opportunities for homeownership for African Americans as part of redressing decades of purposeful exclusion.
Failure to dramatically break from the status quo is to tacitly endorse it. To us, that’s unacceptable. What we need is to embrace friendship not only in our hearts but with our hands as well.
