Focus:

• Question student asked to engage through exercise

  • How do visual and written narratives of black spaces work to inform policies and practices that shape black neighborhoods?

• Methods you teach students in the module

  • critical reading of maps

  • participatory observation

• Specific readings to prepare students for exercise in the module

  • See description

• Course format: seminar, studio for grad, undergrad, stacked?

  • undergraduate

• Detailed “how to”

Summary of the four week module:

Ebenezer AME Church is a historic congregation central to black Georgetown’s cultural landscape. The church was founded in the Herring Hill neighborhood of Georgetown in 1856 by congregants of Mt Zion Baptist Church who wished to join a black denomination. Facing a declining congregation after decades of gentrification, Ebenezer relocated to booming Prince George’s County in the 1980s, after 130 years in Georgetown.

Through this course, students will practice using written archives, visual archives, and physical landscape to engage a Black historical landscape.

Below is a description of our Week C activity.

During Week A students analyze two historic maps (1878, 1903) along with two recent maps (current Google Maps and HistoryQuestDC, which shows property boundaries and original purchase dates). Students also read a short article from the Christian Recorder (the AME newspaper) about Black churches in Georgetown. These activities addressed two questions. 1) How do black institutions in Georgetown relate to each other and anchor the black community? And 2) How can we read racial demographics in 19th century maps?

During Week B students read an obituary of Mary Beckett (from the Christian Recorder, Aug 16, 1894) which discusses the origin of the AME church in Georgetown. Additionally, they viewed a video by Ebenezer AME church about the origins of the church. These activities addressed two questions. 1) What is a cultural landscape? And 2) Can we read the Ebenezer AME building as a monument to black self-determination? How else can the structure be read?

During Week D  (the fourth and final week) students read two newspaper articles about moving Ebenezer AME to Maryland. They will address the following questions. 1) How is the shift in Ebenezer’s location connected to shifts in the congregation’s identity? 2) How do depictions of landscape shape ideas about Prince George’s County as a(n excellent) black space?

Week C activity: Class and Counternarratives: Looking Behind Ebenezer

Guiding Questions: How do maps and documents construct and represent black spaces? How do these compare to the preserved buildings and landscapes? How do these work to inform policies and practices that shape black neighborhoods?

Students will practice:

• Comparing multiple visual narratives of the same space

• Using historical maps to understand contemporary places

• Analyzing and building counter-narratives

Assigned Reading (to be completed prior to class): “The Terrible Beauty of the Slum,” Chapter 1 of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

Fieldtrip:

Share four maps with students:

• 1878 map of Georgetown (from Atlas of fifteen miles around Washington). See Figure 1.

• Current Google map. See Figure 2.

• 1903 Sanborn Fire Insurance map. See Figure 3.

• HistoryQuestDC map of first purchase of lots in Georgetown. See Figure 4.

Students walk from Union Cemetery to Ebenezer AME and Mt. Zion AME. Initially students will need to orient the maps correctly so that, as they walk, they can see where they are walking on the maps as well- this is an important practical lesson. They are asked to look at the maps and to assess the size, location, position, etc. of the buildings. After walking to Ebenezer AME, they then explore Poplar Alley on their own.

On-site discussion questions: 

• How might Black people in Georgetown have experienced these locations in relation to one another?

• Where do we see the history, and historical transformations, of the alley while walking the space?

• What do the maps tell you about construction materials and possible construction dates? What historical events were happening at these times?

• What would have been the feel of interacting with white neighbors while walking these streets? How might walking the alley as a black resident have been different than walking the main streets?

Students will be asked to write down both their initial impressions of their walk along with responses to the questions above in a journal entry during the trip. This helps captures their thought processes while they are experiencing a new place.

Post-trip Assignment:

Essay: Read Black Georgetown Remembered by Lesko et al. (2016, 90- 95). Analyze the narratives of Black Life presented in Figures 5 (Lesko et al. 2016, Figure 52) and 6 (Lesko et al. 2016, Figure 50-B). Figure 5 was used to illustrate an article in Harper’s Bazaar entitled “Bedlam D.C.” by a white woman, Harriet Crowley, who lived near Bell’s Court, another alley similar to Poplar Alley. Figure 6 is a photograph of Poplar Alley from the 1920s.

Please write an essay (c. 3 pages, double-spaced) discussing the following questions:

• What does the cartoon (Figure 5) tell us about dominant white ideas about black residential space in the late 1800s? Why might the cartoon have been published? What political work is its characterization of alley life doing? How might the alley’s residents have understood alley life differently?

• Who might have taken the photo (Figure 6) and for what reason? How could this photo be connected to the creation of the Alley Dwelling Authority?

• What story is told by the structures left from Poplar Street’s alley past and the contemporary arrangement of the alley?