An African American Enclave 14th street and rock creek ford road nw
even before emancipation freed Washington’s enslaved people in April 1862, a free African American community had developed here amid the European American farmers. The District of Columbia, unlike its neighbors, permitted the formerly enslaved to remain within its boundaries. The Shamwell family of free blacks settled in Brightwood in 1837. By 1854, four free black landowners clustered here along Rock Creek Ford Road (once called Milkhouse Ford Road), with a fifth on Piney Branch Road. Four of the five were women. During the Civil War, Fort Stevens and Camp Brightwood attracted more freedmen and women seeking work and protection. For the next 90 years, African American families worked the land, remaining in substantial wood-frame houses even as surrounding farms fell to subdivisions. St. Luke Baptist Church, founded near Fort Totten in 1879, occupied this corner for 29 years. It was the heart of the community. But city redevelopment forced it to move in 1960. The congregation relocated south to Colorado Avenue and later to 1415 Gallatin Street, NW. Brightwood’s first public school for black children, known as the Military Road School, opened at the end of the Civil War in a small wood-frame building close to the school’s present site. Over time, modern development consumed most of the old settlement. Some families, like the Shamwells, refused to sell (their former house remains, enveloped by apartments). But by 1931 new roads and apartments had displaced most. Soon the modern Doreen and other apartments dominated Rock Creek Ford Road.
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