Recovery slow for wracked communities

Forty years after the Martin Luther King’s assassination sparked riots in hundreds of cities across the United States and in the nation’s capital, many D.C. neighborhoods still live with the legacy of violence, decay and indifference that laid waste to vast swaths of the urban landscape.

Substantial strides have been made toward revitalizing devastated neighborhoods, though sometimes at the expense of longtime residents. The real estate boom, gentrification and government growth helped the rebuilding, while simultaneously changing the demographics. The black identity of some areas was lost.

“This has been a very slow and difficult process,” said Albert Hillman, a barber on H Street who was working at his father’s barbershop at the time of King’s death and has lived in the area ever since.

The areas of Shaw, Columbia Heights, the U Street corridor and H Street Northeast, all major social hubs in the city before the riots, for years afterward were tormented by crime and poverty.

That has begun to change, but even today many of the communities feel the effects of the riots. Although the looters left most black-owned businesses alone, the fallout from the riots took their toll on the remaining stores by pushing out many of the residents and putting the neighborhoods off limits.

One of the hardest-hit areas was the vibrant U Street corridor in Northwest, once known as the “black Broadway,” which included the famed Howard Theater, part of the “chitlin circuit,” whose stops included the Apollo Theater in New York and the Regal Theater in Chicago, and featured concerts of black musicians for largely black audiences.

“U Street was the Mecca for black people around here,” said D.C. Council member and former Mayor Marion Barry, Ward 8 Democrat, who in 1968 had recently moved to the District and was part of a campaign to bring King to the District that summer.

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Following the riots, the D.C. government leveled about 70 acres of abandoned and burned-out buildings around U Street and nearby Columbia Heights, rendering the area a ghost town, and the Howard Theater was forced to close in 1970. Nobody wanted to be involved in such a desolate area. Many of the business owners were concerned that rioting would reoccur.

“The private sector was just not willing to make such a risky investment,” said Sean Madigan, a spokesman for the D.C. Office of Planning & Economic Development.

Only after the arrival of a Metrorail stop in 2001 was the area ready for redevelopment.

“That was the catalyst for a lot of the development down there,” said Mr. Madigan “We saw about a billion dollars’ worth of investment within a half a mile of the Metro stop. This was an area that had become just a bunch of vacant parcels of land.”

Today, the area is largely revitalized. Just last month the neighborhood saw a major boost with the opening of DC USA, a 540,000-square-foot mall with a Marshall’s and a Target. Nearby are numerous restaurants and coffee shops, all on the same land that was largely considered untouchable by developers only 10 years ago.

In nearby Shaw, the Washington Convention Center has been the cornerstone of the region’s rebirth, attracting other hotels and restaurants.

During the ’70s and ’80s the only patrons willing to set up shop there were churches, offering help and housing for the city’s homeless and indigent while the private sector ignored the area. Today, real estate developers and entrepreneurs are lining up to get their hands on land in Shaw.

“In five years from now, the only way people will know there was a riot here will be from the Heritage trail signs,” said Alexander M. Padro, the executive director of Shaw Main Streets, a nonprofit organization that promotes the area’s development.

Meanwhile on H Street Northeast, the resurgence of the area has been slower and the street is still filled with vacant lots and cavities where buildings were burned.

“We used to have every shop you could name down here,” said Mr. Hillman, the barber.

While the majority of businesses looted on H Street at the time were owned by Jews and Italians, most of them employed blacks who lived nearby, recalled Mr. Hillman. After the stores were burned, many owners moved their businesses to suburbs or safer neighborhoods, putting many blacks out of work.

But now, the area is beginning to see its own resurrection, particularly as a black neighborhood, with many of the businesses owned by blacks. Recently, popular restaurants and lounges have started to sprout up on H Street, including the Rock and Roll Hotel and the Palace of Wonders.

“Business is good down here,” said Mr. Hillman. “There are a lot of things coming together.”

Beginning in the early evening on April 4, 1968, upon learning of King’s assassination in Memphis, Tenn., angry blacks throughout the city took their frustration and mourning to the streets. They began fire-bombing and looting businesses.

“We saw crowds beginning to form around 7:30 near 14th and U,” said Mr. Barry. “I tried to get them to calm down. That’s when the riot started to break out. Firetrucks couldn’t even get down there till 3 or 4 in the morning.”

“We could see the fires early on April 5,” said Jim McNeece, a Columbia Heights native and volunteer fireman for Prince George’s County at the time, who was brought in to help fight the fires in the District. “About 24 hours later, they called us because the D.C. fire crews were overwhelmed. Rioters pelted us with rocks and bottles as we put out the fires.”

In the end, the riots led to 10 deaths, 1,200 injuries, and 7,600 arrests and damage of $13 million, according to the Washington Star. The aftermath of the riots have had an unfortunate lasting effect on the city, stunting what many think could have been major economic and cultural development for the District.

“It was sad and terrible for business,” said Mr. Hillman. “We had a bad reputation.”

“My first thoughts after [the] riots was we need to build this community back up,” said Mr. Barry “I had mixed emotions about the riot. I was trained in nonviolence, but I understood their frustration.”

On the other end of all the development in the past decade is a changing identity of what were known as largely black areas. While the streets look nicer and the businesses are financially sound again, the resurgence has brought a drastic increase in home prices, excluding many low- and middle-income residents who rented their houses.

“Those areas are still changing,” said Thornell Page, a vice chairman of the Howard Theater Restoration project. “They are still mostly black and will be for another couple of years, but things are rapidly changing.”

“There used to be more neighborhood stores,” according to Mr. Barry. “Now you have Target and high-rise condos, but those places are out of reach for many people in the area.”