Barry Farm-Hillsdale in Anacostia: A Historic African American Community

by Alcione M. Amos

Overview

Discover the history of one of the oldest Black communities in Washington, D.C.

Barry Farm-Hillsdale was created under the auspices of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1867, in what was then the outskirts of the nation's capital. Residents built churches and schools and the community grew throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1940s local youth courageously desegregated the Anacostia Pool and Barry Farm Dwellings was built to house war workers. In the 1950s community parents joined the fight to desegregate schools in Washington, D.C. as local leaders fought off plans to redevelop the area. Residents of Barry Farm Dwellings, then public housing, were at the forefront of the fight to improve their lives and those of their neighbors in the 1960s, but community identity was beginning to be subsumed into the larger Anacostia neighborhood.

Historian and Anacostia Community Museum curator Alcione Amos tells these little remembered stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467147699
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	01/04/2021
Series:	American Heritage
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Alcione M. Amos, currently a museum curator at the Smithsonian Institution Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C., is originally from Brazil and has lived and worked in the United States for almost five decades. She received an MSLS from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. Among other works, she has published two books: The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom Seeking People and Os Que Voltaram: A História dos Retornados Afro-Brasileiros na África Ocidental no Século XIX (Those Who Returned: The History of the Afro-Brazilian Returnees in West Africa in the 19th Century).

Table of Contents

Foreword Everett L. Fly 7

Preface 11

Part I History of Place

Chapter 1 Mrs. Barry's Farm 17

Part II The First Decades

Chapter 2 The Creation of a Nineteenth-Century African American Community 25

Chapter 3 New Beginnings for the Newly Freed People 33

Chapter 4 Resources for Supporting Community life 40

Chapter 5 The Community Takes Root 48

Part III The New Century: Successes and Challenges

Chapter 6 A Thriving Community: Businesses and Entertainment 63

Chapter 7 Not Everything Was Well 78

Part IV The 1940S: And Then Came Change

Chapter 8 World War II, Barry Farm Dwellings and the Military Road 91

Chapter 9 Move Them Out! 104

Chapter 10 A Prelude of Things to Come: The Integration of the Anacostia Pool, 1949 113

Part V The 1950S and 1960S: Desegregation (but Not Integration) and Vibrant Activism

Chapter 11 Desegregation (but Not Integration) of the Schools 123

Chapter 12 The 1960s: The Community's Loss of Identity and Vibrant Civil Rights Activism 146

Conclusion 165

Notes 167

Selected Bibliography 207

Index 209

About the Author 223

Editorial Reviews

Amos, a historian who retired in June as curator at the nearby Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, does an excellent job centering the voices of Barry Farm-Hillsdale residents in this book...The book is engrossing throughout but especially hits its stride in part four with the creation of the Barry Farm Dwellings in the 1940s and the integration of the Anacostia Pool in 1949.

From the Publisher