In 1967, the city began to demolish the Taylor Street Bridge to make way for the North Central Freeway. It was part of a Congressional plan for new highways through the city. Protests erupted and would challenge powerful forces for control of the city’s future.
Little Isabel Wall was kicked out of the Brookland School in 1909. Whether she was white or black was a question that roiled the neighborhood.
Racially-restrictive housing covenants were a tool used to keep people of color out of certain neighborhoods. Brookland was one of them.
Racially-restrictive housing covenants were a vicious tool to keep neighborhoods white. A block of Kearny Street provides an example.
There were many tools the establishment used to keep people of color out of particular neighborhoods. Racially-restrictive housing covenants was one of the most powerful.
Poet and Howard University professor Sterling Brown writes an illuminating response to Jeremiah O’Leary’s nostalgic column on growing up in Brookland.
Bygone Brookland 