Exploring Our Neighborhood: Black Broad Branch & Belmont

Exploring Our Neighborhood: Black Broad Branch and Belmont. . , Have you ever wondered? , In a city with nearly equal numbers of Black and white residents, why is Ward 3's population 70% white and 8% Black?, Since at least the 1700's, Black people have lived and thrived in the area, despite constant efforts to expel or exclude them. The stories of Broad Branch and Belmont illustrate the ambitions and successes of these communities, and the many tools that were used against them., Black Broad Branch , In the early 20th century, Black families along Broad Branch Road NW were forced to leave the land and homes they owned in order to make way for the newly developing all-white neighborhood of Chevy Chase D.C. The Black Broad Branch Project documents this history, and advances the vision for repair put forth by the descendants of these families today., The District of Columbia in the early 19th century was largely rural. By the 1840s, a third of Washington's Black population was enslaved, and free Black people made up less than 10% of the overall population. A small community of free Black families clustered together along Broad Branch Road in rural Washington County. In the 1840s, a free Black couple, Thomas and Mary Ann Harris, moved into this area. Sometime in the 1850s, they purchased two acres of land Broad Branch Road from one of their Black neighbors. Their property, then known as Dry Meadows, was directly across the street from the Belt plantation, which was owned by Charles Belt and worked by enslaved Black people., Mary Ann and Thomas Harris thrived at Dry Meadows, raising eight children. They grew food for themselves, as well as for sale at local markets, including markets in Georgetown. The Harrises and their neighbors were unusual: by 1890, only 10% of all Black families owned their own homes., As the family grew, the Harrises subdivided Dry Meadows so that multiple parts of their extended family could have their own homes adjacent to one another. The Harrises' youngest daughter, Mary, married Armstead Moten in 1877, and the couple moved onto a portion of the family land., Over the course of the 1920s, the all-white developments built by the Chevy Chase Land Company were growing, and families were demanding a new school. The Black families that owned land along Broad Branch were forced to leave the area so that the white-only Lafayette Elementary school and its adjacent park could be developed on the land. In August 1928, the federal government used its power of eminent domain to force Mary Moten to sell her land for $6,862.50. Construction on Lafayette Elementary began in 1929, and the school opened in 1931. Ten years after the families' land was taken, their history had been erased. A 1938 Washington Post article reported that "Lafayette School which stands on the site of once barren ground is now the hub of a thriving community live., [Captions:] , This detail from an 1856-59 topographical map of the District of Columbia shows a portion of rural Washington County , part of today's Upper Northwest D.C. The red circle indicates where the families of Black Broad Branch lived. The property owned by C.R. Belt can be seen just below the Black Broad Branch location., The red circle indicates the location of T. Harris's land. By 1891, the Chevy Chase Land Company had bought up much of the land surrounding the small Black Broad Branch community., Close-up map of D.C. schools for the 1932-32 school year, showing the location of the new Lafayette Elementary School (#214) and adjacent park , exactly replacing the land of the Harrises, Motens, and Dorsey-Shorters., Article from The Evening Star, March 4, 1931, describing the removal of the last Black family from their land along Broad Branch Road., Washington, D.C., 1919. The Black community along Broad Branch Road is highlighted in pink. Here we see the land owned by the Harris family descendants, including the Motens. We also see the adjacent land of the Dorsey-Shorter family, another free Black landowning family in the community., The people of Black Broad Branch were an extraordinary group, enmeshed in the history of Washington, D.C., and the nation., The Harris family traced their lineage to Captain George Pointer, who was born enslaved on a Maryland tobacco plantation in 1773. At age 13, Pointer was "rented out" to work for George Washington's Potomac Company. He was able to purchase his own freedom at age 19, married, and raised three children in a cottage in Little Falls. An 11-page letter he wrote in 1829 details his life story., In 1828, George Pointer and his small granddaughter, Mary Ann, piloted a boat carrying President John Quincy Adams to a ceremonial groundbreaking of the Chesapeake and Ohio Company Canal. By the 1850s, Mary Ann, now grown up and married to Thomas Harris, purchased land along Broad Branch Road., Another Black Broad Branch family, the Dorsey-Shorters, traced their lineage back to Caroline Branham, who was born enslaved at George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation in 1764; her work included tending to Martha Washington's needs. Caroline Branham's grandson, Wilson Branham, born in 1858, married Frances Henry. After Frances died, Wilson Branham placed their two daughters, Rosa and Sarah, in the care of Frances's sister, Laura (Henry) Dorsey, and her husband, Robert, who had purchased land along Broad Branch Road in 1883. Laura Dorsey was the Black community's grocer, and may have used part of her house as a store. Eventually, Rosa Branham med and married Richard Delosier Shorter, and together they raised five children in the Black Broad Branch community. The children played on the land and often camped out under the stars., [Captions:] , A portion of Captain George Pointer's 1829 letter to the President and Directors of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, The Washington Post feature highlighting Mary Moten, 73, daughter of Mary Ann Harris and great-granddaughter of Captain George Pointer. Moten is pictured in front of her home at 5803 Broad Branch Road, Chevy Chase D.C., in 1928 , 100 years after her mother piloted the President., Rosa and Richard Shorter stand on their land on Broad Branch Road., William Shorter, Anna Shorter's childhood friend Bessie Brooks (seated), and other neighborhood children "camping out" in the Shorter's backyard on Broad Branch Road., Willie and Rosie Shorter play with another young boy in the Shorters's backyard and field on Broad Branch Road., Robert and Laura (Henry) Dorsey were the original owners of their Broad Branch home, which they built in 1883. They added a single-story addition in 1884., Two of Rosa and Richard Shorter's five children , William (Willie) and Shirley Shorter , Lucille, and a young boy playing in their backyard on Broad Branch Road., Belmont, Chevy Chase, MD , Up the street to the right, the concrete building above the Friendship Heights Metrorail station marks the absence of what almost was: a Black neighborhood in Chevy Chase, MD called Belmont. For three years, that land was owned by four African American businessmen who sold lots to at least 28 other Black people to build homes. Had they succeeded, they would have been the first African Americans to develop an elite suburb for themselves., However, their plan was thwarted, not through violence or racial covenants, but busing legal maneuvers that seem race neutral and therefore persist to this day. In understanding what happened on the old farmland between Western Avenue and Oliver Street, one can see how African Americans, even those with wealth, were excluded from the west side of D.C., and how D.C.'s Black suburbs ended up in the east., On June 28, 1906, Charles Cuney, Alexander Satterwhite, Michael Dumas, and James Neill purchased one of the many subdivided plots of land in Montgomery County, MD along Wisconsin Avenue. This land had been assembled by the Chevy Chase Land Company, an investment vehicle for avowed white supremacist Senator Francis G. Newlands that developed the adjacent namesake neighborhood of Chevy Chase. They used a white man as an intermediary to complete the sale. Calling themselves the Belmont Syndicate, they advertised the 175 lots widely in both white and Black newspapers. They described it as "high-class," the "luxury" of the time, and said it was "the only good subdivision in Washington where colored people are welcomed to buy.", However, threats from neighbors slowed sales. In the end, the Chevy Chase Land Company manipulated terms from the mortgage and the court system to prevent purchases from gaining title to the land. Sales stopped and the Syndicate defaulted in 1909. After years of limbo, the final member of the Syndicate agreed to a legal settlement in 1925. On August 13, 1926, the Land Company erased the legal subdivision of Belmont and incorporated he land into Chevy Chase Section 1A. The commercial strip where the concrete building and the Saks Fifth Avenue now sit was established to buffer Chevy Chase from Wisconsin Avenue. A street named Belmont Avenue is the only other remnant., The successful suppression of Belmont signaled that the pattern of suburban growth in D.C. would be segregated. After Belmont, developers, often backed by white interests, only built suburbs for African Americans northeast of D.C. Neighborhoods like Lincoln, Glenarden, and Fairmount Heights solidified Prince George's County, MD, as an area of 20th century Black affluence., The legal techniques used at Belmont, paired with other similar expulsions at Dry Meadows/Broad Branch and Reno, secured a future for the area northwest of the White House to be one of concentrated wealth and whiteness. Belmont was not stopped by racial covenants, restrictions written into property deeds; those did not exist on the land when the Belmont Syndicate bought it. It was stopped using sophisticated legal maneuvers by a well-capitalized and connected corporation that exploited racial disparities in wealth and political access. This type of exclusion would become the default mode of suburbanization throughout the 20th century, and continues today., [Captions:] , Plat of a portion of Chevy Chase Section 4, known as Belmont., White residents in Somerset and Friendship Heights watched Belmont's progress with horror. They threatened violence and ultimately arrested Satterwhite on flimsy charges. Facing a penalty of up to $30,000, he was tried and acquitted on the porch of a local judge's estate, twice on the same day. Assured of their property rights, the Belmont Syndicate persisted., The Belmont project made front page news in the July 8, 1906 Washington Times., Stories of Belmont circulated long after its quiet conclusion, becoming warped. In the retelling, Belmont was not a development for Black professionals, but one for servants and agricultural workers. In no version of these rumors were the developers Black., Calloway House, Lincoln, Md., was developed by Neill's Fisk classmate, Thomas Calloway, together with the white-owned United States Realty Corp., and was promoted to Black professionals from Washington and Baltimore., buffers . community norm . trusts . redlining . vertical integration . price . mortgage discrimination . micromunicipalities . steering . exclusive zoning . restrictive covenants . expulsive zoning . mortgage regulations . racial covenants . harassment . local control . broker discrimination . violence . exclusive brokerage . racial zoning . nuisance laws . assessment. A constellation of tools can be used to exclude people from land, ranging from violence to social custom, many of which are ostensibly race-neutral., Professional African American men like the Belmont Syndicate formed a small community with tight social connections. James Neill connected with Dumas at Fisk University and later attended Howard University with him. W. E. B. Du Bois was also at Fisk, and Dumas was part of the Niagara Movement with him. Neill and Dumas were co-workers at the Pension Bureau, while Cuney may have worked with Neill's brother as auditors at the Post Office Department. The Belmont developers were also social with each other in organizations like the Colored Elks, and were on the board of a savings society called the Protective Benefit Society, the type of social and political networks that have always helped smooth business deals., Many of the lot buyers also had interconnected relationship or ties to each other and deep into the community. Alexander Oglesby was a shareholder in one of Neill's previously failed projects. Neill's brother, Lewis Neill, and sister, Elizabeth Haney, bought lots. At one point, Andrew Mickens lived in a house owned by Lemuel M. Beckett's mother's estate, and his wife shared her maiden name with another buyer, Foley, who may have been a relative. George LaFayette Walton likely knew Cuney because both were members of the prestigious Pen and Pencil Club. Notably, many single women signed contracts, including Martha Lee, Lucy F. Campbell, and Sarah Hall., Alexander Oglesby was a Civil War veteran of the 14th United States Colored Infantry Company F out of Chattanooga, Tenn., and had a lifelong career as a personal messenger for Lieutenant Henry Clark Corbin. He was active in numerous military veterans associations, including the National Memorial Association committee that petitioned President Calvin Coolidge to build a "memorial building in Washington in honor of the negro soldiers and sailors" who served in World War I., Martha Claggett, who signed her contract to purchase a Belmont lot as a single woman and later married Dumas, was supported by a good civil service job as a clerk on the Bureau of Fisheries' steamer RV Albatross, "the first vessel built especially for marine research by any government.", George LaFayette Walton was involved in some of the social and beneficial societies that served D.C.'s Black elite. He served on the executive committee of the Washington Division of the National Negro Business League, and was Secretary of the Young Men's Protective League, an officer of the Soap Box Club, and Secretary of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Washington, DC (colored)., Lot Buyers , Clagett, Margaret C. . Cooper, A.H. . Foley, Lucius A. . Fry, Charles (Clifford) C. . Hall, Sarah . Haney, Elizabeth D. . Johnson, Thomas A. . Barnett, Charles . Beckett, Lemuel M. . Booker, B. [Buehler], P.W. . Butler, Phillip H. . Campbell, Lucy F. . Lee, Martha . Mickens, Andrew E. . Neill, Lewis H. . Oglesby, A. . Overton, Wiley . Payne, William H. . Shepherd, David . Taylor, John L. . Thomas, Henry L. . Thomas, Z. T. . Walton, George LaFayette . Willson, Joseph D. . Wilson, Ora L. . Wright, Charles H. . Young, J.M.H., [Captions:] , This portrait of Neill and his wife Jessie was provided by a descendant., Alexander Oglesby's contract to purchase a lot at Belmont., Article from The Evening Star, April 17, 1925, about the work by the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants (colored) to secure voting rights for African Americans on the anniversary of emancipation., R/V Albatross I, 1882-1921, NOAA Fisheries., Repair and Reparations , What are the steps we can take today to repair and heal the harm done to our former community members in the past?, Several roadmaps provide helpful ways forward., The United Nations' International Human Rights Framework for Reparations , Victims have a right to reparation. This refers to measures to redress violations of human rights by providing a range of material and symbolic benefits to victims or their families as well as affected communities. Reparation must be adequate, effective, prompt, and should be proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered., Reparation measures include:

. Restitution , . Compensation , . Rehabilitation , . Satisfaction

, From Transitional Justice and Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, United Nations., ACE Model of Reparations , As they conducted their research with descendants of Black Broad Branch families , recording their life stories, and hearing their hopes and ideas for repair in the future , University of the District of Columbia students created the "ACE" model of reparations: Acknowledgement, Compensation, and Education. Crucially, this model is rooted in the understanding that any reparations effort must be grounded in the desires of the descendants., Broad Branch

Acknowledgement: Acknowledgement has begun, with the city's renaming of Lafayette-Pointer Park. In June 2022, the park was renamed in honor of George Pointer and his descendants, who were forced to leave the land in order to create the park. , Compensation: City leaders are beginning to discuss compensation amid larger discussions of reparations. In June 2023, D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie held a hearing on Bill 25-0152, the "Reparations Foundation Fund and Task Force Establishment Act of 2023." , Education: The Black Broad Branch Project has been especially active in enacting the third element of the descendants' vision for repair: education. Members have worked with Georgetown University education students to create a D.C. Public Schools curriculum based on the families' stories; led teacher training workshops; testified at the United Nations about the history; spoken to public school classrooms; and, spoken at many other public venues.

, Belmont

Acknowledgement: In 2024, the Maryland Cultural Resources Division of the Department of Transportation will place a historical marker at the Belmont site on Wisconsin Avenue near the Friendship Heights Metrorail stop. This permanent acknowledgement of the project, in the form of a cast metal marker, will serve to memorialize Belmont and teach future generations. , Compensation: During their work over the last six years researching this story, historians Kim Bender and Neil Flanagan were able to find the names of many people involved in Belmont, allowing them to piece together preliminary biographical information for many of them, but not all. The increased public dissemination of the Belmont story has led to connections with descendants of two of the Belmont developers. At least one is interested in exploring compensation or other forms of reparations. , Education: Education about the Belmont story has included a YouTube video, stories in local news media, and presentations at local and national academic conferences, which has increased the local public recognition of this history.

, It only takes a small change of focus to better understand why the world around us looks the way it does and understand how to better support our community in the future. What do you think?

Is there somewhere in your neighborhood you're curious about?, How would you like to learn the deeper history of what happened here?, What broader patterns do you see in these stories?, Where do these stories need to be told?, Who needs to hear these stories?, What are ways we can help repair damage from the past?

, [Captions:] , Pointer-Harris and Dorsey Shorter descendants on the Black Broad Branch land, aka Lafayette-Pointer Park, Jocelind Julien, descendant of Rosa and Richard Shorter, testified at the June 2023 hearing., Black Broad Branch members speak to students at Woodrow Wilson (now Jackson-Reed) Senior High School, March 2022, Alexander Satterwhite, The Colored American, June 21, 1902, The Washington Post, July 15, 1906