Saying Goodbye To The Kojo Nnamdi Show
On this last episode, we look back on 23 years of joyous, difficult and always informative conversation.
The Frederick Douglass House in historic Anacostia.
You’ve probably seen the signs around the District: Neighborhood Heritage Trails combine stories, historic photos and maps marking these self-guided walking tours. The last in the series of trails opened recently, tracing the people and events of historic Anacostia, LeDroit Park and Bloomingdale. We explore the two newest trails with the historians and researchers who helped create them.
Guests
- Jane Freundel Levey Consultant and independent historian; former Director, Heritage Programs, Cultural Tourism DC
- Maybelle Bennett Director, Howard University Community Association
- Charles Wilson Member, working group, Anacostia Neighborhood Heritage Trail
Photos: The Anacostia & LeDroit Park-Bloomingdale Heritage Trail
A test pilot from Bolling Field, around 1925. U.S. Army Air Corps Photo
A lively evening at Harrison’s Café at 455 Florida Ave., which served families, clubs, and also ran an after-hours club upstairs. Photograph by Robert McNeill, Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Washington Senators baseball fans lined up for tickets at Griffith Stadium on Opening Day 1947 to see President Harry S. Truman throw out the first pitch. Washingtoniana Division, DC Public Library.
As a teenager, renowned jazz singer Shirley Horn lived with relatives at 47 R Street to study at Howard University’s Junior Music School. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Government girls play cards in the Slowe Hall residence hall game room, 1942. In addition to housing young women working for the federal government during World War II, Slowe Hall offered meeting spaces that brought notables to the neighborhood. It is now a Howard University dorm. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
An 1892 advertisement for Le Droit Park featured the house at 1915 Harewood Ave. (Third St., now razed) that architect James McGill designed for his family. Photo courtesy of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Two years after Frederick Douglass’s first wife Anna died at Cedar Hill in 1882, he married his former clerk, suffragist Helen Pitts (seated with Douglass and Helen’s sister Eva). Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.
The doo-wop group the Bobolinks (later the Memories) played its first gigs at the Hi-Ho restaurant, 1431 Good Hope. After school, recalled Memories singer Lou Martin, students would “all walk over to the Hi-Ho and hang out. . . . [they’d be] dancing in the aisles, and we’d be singing harmony.” The restaurant’s manager produced the band’s first record, “I Promise,” on the Hi Ho label in 1959. Collection of Louis Martin.
All dressed up for July 4th, around 1910, is Campbell’s Hardware of 1300 Good Hope Rd. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Businesses that once thrived along Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. included F. G. Lindsay at 2215, photographed around 1915. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Matthew Taylor’s family on their Sheridan Rd. front porch, early 1900s. Photo courtesy of the Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, courtesy of Audrey E. Taylor Griggs
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