♪ ♪ WILEY: The first time that I heard about Barry Farms was actually from my grandfather.

He loved to tell me about DC history and he would say, you know, "This used to be this, and that used to be that."

And I was like, "Really Grandpa?

Cause I don't see it."

You know, he's telling me about Barry Farm and I didn't understand what he was saying.

I still didn't fully understand the successive levels of people living on that site.

And how you could have a place for freedom, and youths to live and a public housing project and, you know, civil rights activists and Go-Go music, like, it was a lot.

And it made me think about telling the story and getting the story on record.

If you're not on record, it's almost like you didn't exist.

PRINCE: The history of Washington DC is one of community building and displacement.

The cycles predate the city.

The indigenous Powhatan of the Chesapeake, the Piscataway of Maryland, and along the eastern branch of the Potomac and into Anacostia.

The Nacotchtank thrived in villages and towns prior to colonization.

These shifts of place and displacement continue to this day with a breakneck pace of gentrification.

BELT: It's only a year, a little over a year that we've, um, all been displaced.

When I heard that, all over the country, public housing was being taken away I just couldn't believe it would happen to us.

I miss my house.

We used to hear that, when we'd come out, music, people washing cars, talking trash, and now you just hear the demolition, and homes being tore down.

And you can just see all this land, this is, like, a lot of land.

This is like a goldmine to the developers.

Oh, my goodness.

WOMAN: It was right here, our house was right here.

BELT: Mmm-hmm.

Ah, yeah, it was right here.

WOMAN: This was my walkway, this was my walkway.

BELT: Yep, yep, oh wow, they done already tore down my mother's house.

WOMAN: Our house is gone, babe.

MAN: There's a five-story building with a parking garage underneath and the first floor will be concrete walls with a, like a CVS or a Walgreens, grocery store, all that kind of stuff.

BELT: I lived here, so, yeah, I hope it could be my grocery store.

♪ ♪ FISHER JR.: It seems to me that the evolution of US cities always happens on the back of Black communities.

MCDONALD: If people knew how amazing Barry Farms and Anacostia was back then, they would see a lot of stuff differently.

MAN 2: Barry Farm, to me, was like one big ol grandma house.

EAGLIN: It was called Barry Farms because in that whole area around there were these, the remnants of what were a whole series of farms.

That whole area out there was bought by the federal government, you know, when they bought it from this man Barry.

WILEY: We know Barry Farm as a public housing project, but Barry Farm was indeed an actual plantation.

SMITH: When the Civil War started, slavery was legal in Washington, DC.

It was as legal here as it was in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, and anyplace else in the country where slaves were being bought and sold within three or four blocks of the capitol.

WILEY: The original L'enfant plan of Washington, DC, the boundaries to the north, including what we know as Florida Avenue, now.

That was Washington City.

The diamond, specifically what we can think of as Washington, DC, was considered Washington County and it was more rural.

The Barry that we know from Barry Farms, he had a farm but he cultivated on the other side of the Anacostia River.

We have to understand the history of Barry and Barry Farm as a slave-owning planter in Washington, DC that's who he was and his name is still on the land.

Washington, DC emancipated enslaved people before the end of the Civil War.

By the end of the 1860's you have this, kind of, country land around the city that used to be worked by enslaved people.

It's no longer being worked by the folks who toiled the land.

PRINCE: With the nation engulfed in Civil War, Washington became a beacon for enslaved people.

Many were arrested and some returned to bondage, yet the migration continued.

In 1861 the Evening Star wrote, "Most of the slaves have expressed themselves to the effect that they thought they would be free if they could get to Washington."

AMOS: Before, during, and after the Civil War, African Americans poured into Washington.

At least 40,000 to 50,000 people that came in.

Of course, it was very difficult for them to find housing.

Many of them were living on the streets, you know, in poorly built housing.

FISHER JR.: Black people being in other parts of the district where White folks, at the time, didn't really want Black people in their neighborhood.

AMOS: After the Civil War, the Freedman's Bureau decided that one of the things they could do was to buy some land and create a neighborhood, a settlement.

FISHER JR.: General Oliver Otis Howard met with some of those Black families to talk about what they wanted to do or how they wanted to address this issue.

And they said they wanted land, right, the opportunity to build a life for themselves.

Through the Freedman's Bureau, they purchased a large part of land separated from where a lot of the other White communities were to give these Black people, these free Black people, an opportunity to build their lives.

PRINCE: In 1867 the Freedman's Bureau purchased 375 acres of farmland from the Barry family.

It was divided into plots that would be sold to formerly enslaved people.

WILEY: I know we always hear about the idea of 40 acres and a mule, but this wasn't even that.

This was people who purchased the land, right?

They weren't given the land.

Why do these folks even have to buy this land in the first place?

I still feel like it was really their birthright, um, to be able to be land owners because that was one of the many things that had been denied them for so long even though they worked the land themselves.

PRINCE: The early residents of Barry Farm included a Reverend, school teachers, builders, and farmers.

Many had experienced the horrors of slavery directly.

One founding community member, Emily Edmonson, had taken a particularly perilous route to Barry's Farm.

MCDONALD: Emily Edmonson is my great-great-grandmother.

My great-great- great-grandfather was a freed slave, but his wife was born into slavery and it was known that when you were a slave, a female slave, your children belonged to your master as well.

PRINCE: Emily and her sister, Mary were enslaved in Montgomery County, Maryland and they were hired out by their owner to work as servants in Washington, DC.

At the age of 13, Emily joined her 16-year-old sister for a daring escape.

Under the cover of darkness, the sisters joined 75 other enslaved people crossing the National Mall where the Washington Monument was then under construction, then moving towards the wharf on 7th street where a schooner was waiting.

MCDONALD: The Pearl.

The largest slave escape attempt in history.

Among them were, like, 14 children.

All these families paid money.

They were actually trying to get to Pennsylvania.

GILBERT: The idea was to go down the Potomac, up through the bay, and head north.

PRINCE: The first night, The Pearl made little progress in the dead winds.

GILBERT: They were very religious people, um, I say this with pride and a bit of humor.

So, they prayed for wind.

PRINCE: The next morning, the schooner hit a fierce storm.

GILBERT: They got a double dosage of it.

Uh, so much that they had to drop anchor in a place called Cornfield Harbor.

MCDONALD: It was, like, really bad weather.

The boat was too big, it was muddy.

SMITH: Not only did they risk being captured, but they also risked their lives with the elements.

This was a treacherous trail that they had to follow to get out of here.

MCDONALD: They almost got away cause they were, like, really hiding but somebody saw them from a distance and that's when they got them.

PRINCE: The Pearl was tracked down by a boat filled with armed vigilantes.

GILBERT: The posses had steamboats, so they could get momentum and they did catch them.

PRINCE: Every one of the passengers was arrested and paraded down the streets of Washington, DC subjected to the abuse of a pro-slavery mob.

"Aren't you ashamed?"

someone heckled the Edmonson sisters.

Emily replied, "If I could, I would do it again."

GILBERT: They were sold south as a penalty for escape.

AMOS: Took down to New Orleans to be sold.

WILEY: They wanted to sell them into prostitution so that they would not try this again.

PRINCE: The Edmonson sisters were spared this fate, however, when leading abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher and Fredrick Douglass raised the money to purchase their freedom as part of their ongoing abolitionist work.

AMOS: Emily studied, became a teacher, worked in a school here in Washington, DC.

PRINCE: In the 1870s Emily Edmonson and her husband purchased property in the new community on Barry's old farm.

And she lived there until her death in 1895.

And it was so beautiful, it was so big, it went all the way back to the water.

she had this porch that wrapped completely around the house, you could just walk all the way around.

FISCHER JR.: The very things that we champion in this country, hard work, personal responsibility, this was the Barry Farm community.

A thriving Black enclave.

AMOS: They usually would build their houses on the front of the lot and then they would cultivate what they called the "Backlot" with fruit trees, small vegetable gardens, and raise poultry and small livestock.

SMITH: So if you had a dairy farm up on this end, a grain farm over on that end, this is how you, sort of, organize the city.

AMOS: How amazing was that these people who had just come from enslavement were able to buy their land, build their houses and create a neighborhood that became quite successful?

FISHER JR.: This has been, um, part of its legacy.

A black homeownership community in the District of Columbia.

♪ WOMAN: Good love, show me the way.

♪♪ GILBERT: There's history and there's history.

There's history of this is simply what happened and then you're fortunate if you can say, "And I am proud of that."

So, I am the great-great-grandson of Emily Edmonson.

Direct descendant.

But when you hear that they escaped from the 7th Street Wharf.

In my life, that's where I hung out to get crabs and shrimp and fish and hang out at Haynes Point.

You know, teenager acting goofy looking for...

Taking my wife down there, my girlfriend at that time, you know that type stuff.

Going to the monument to watch the fireworks.

So, when I read the story and they said they came down this street and they went that way and you know, Maine Avenue whatever it was called...

It just resonates with me that not long after they had to sneak through those streets for freedom, I had the freedom and I could just walk those streets.

♪ GROUP: O brothers, let's go down, ♪ ♪ down to the river to pray.

♪ AMOS: At some point, the African American community in Barry Farm was concerned with the name Barry Farm because the Barry family had owned enslaved people.

So they decided, okay, we want to change it to Hillsdale.

SHOENFELD: That Hillsdale community included people like Georgiana Simpson who is said to be the first Black woman to ever get a Ph.D. Garnett Wilkinson's family, he was um, longtime superintendent of the Black schools when we had a dual school system.

Hillsdale was the home to these people.

MCDONALD: They have ice creamery, um, tailors, printers...

It just amazes me how they flourished.

PRINCE: Against the wishes of community members, the name "Hillsdale" was never officially adopted.

It never appeared on city maps and to this day the area is still known as Barry Farm.

♪ ♪ PRINCE: In the 1930s and 40s, African Americans continued to migrate to Washington, DC creating a dire need for new housing.

Under pressure from White citizens who did not want to integrate their neighborhoods, the city chose to build a new public housing complex on Barry Farm.

32 houses of the Hillsdale community were destroyed.

442 new units were built and a new community was born.

EAGLIN: That was the reason why Barry Farms was built.

Segregation did not have to be legalized, okay?

It was, it was structurally imposed.

It was built for minorities, particularly Blacks, who had come to Washington and it was created for those folks who had government jobs.

REV.

FISHER: We were able to get a place there because my mother had two sons in the military.

I lived at 1287 Stevens Road, which meant that we just had a panoramic view of Washington, DC.

EAGLIN: They built it soundly.

I mean, they built it more soundly than most of these structures that we have today.

REV.

FISHER: Barry Farms was like a perfect community.

A haven.

Everybody took pride in keeping their homes up.

We knew that you did not pick a flower out of somebody's yard.

Whatever you needed to keep your property up, you did it.

WALSH: We used to have competitions about whose yard was the prettiest, okay?

And believe me, I have dug enough grass and planted enough grass seeds to last a lifetime because my mother wanted to always to have the prettiest yard, okay?

It was our home.

EAGLIN: These places had great backyards because, you know, this is the, the yard went that way and then it dropped down and it was just alley.

REV.

FISHER: It was a driveway for the maintenance trucks to come through to pick up the trash and whatnot.

But to us, it was our private playground.

EAGLIN: So, that's where everybody learned to ride their bikes and skates and stuff.

GILBERT: We shot (inaudible) and we played football.

REV.

FISHER: We would play dodgeball, we would play baseball.

Of course, we didn't have a baseball.

We had discarded tennis balls.

But we didn't know, it bounced, and we could hit it with the piece of that stick we call a bat.

EAGLIN: And every block had its own team, okay?

So, you had to play.

You get in a fight and you talk about who's on the best team.

They were all great.

GILBERT: I had a lot of friends, a lot of friends seemed like family.

WALSH: In the summertime, when we didn't have a lot to do, our parents would put the record players out and we'd dance in the alley, having a party.

Rock and roll, come on, that R&B!

EAGLIN: When you were growing up in the 50s, you had to be hip.

WALSH: The Miracles, James Brown, the same music that I'm listening to still today.

What can I, what can I tell ya?

REV.

FISHER: We were living in the projects, but that was home.

It was rich, it was beautiful.

Your neighbor could need a half a cup of milk til payday.

Take a whole cup, you can get it back.

If you needed one egg.

I remember sharing one egg, a cup of sugar, whatever was needed your neighbor had it.

My dad would go down to the river and would come back with these huge carp.

The tail would be dragging the ground, they would have two or three on the pole between them.

Oh, it was celebration time.

And my mom would clean that fish.

When she finished it would taste like a pork chop.

I didn't understand that we were poor until my first semester at Howard University in sociology.

Because our lifestyle was so rich.

EAGLIN: We grew up together.

I didn't realize how intensely middle-class we were.

That's why they moved out of the South, was to escape poverty and it was to declare yourself as being not only not poor, but being equal to anybody else who's middle class.

GILBERT: I'm from a place called Hurt, Virginia.

That's outside of Lynchburg.

I was 11 years old.

We had to work with our parents in tobacco fields, peanut fields or cotton fields, or whatever.

In my case, it was tobacco.

PRINCE: In the 1940s, the job opportunities created by the wartime economy, combined with the unrelenting pressure and violence of Jim Crow in the South, sparked another wave of African American migration north to cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

Many of the first residents of the Barry Farm dwellings, were a part of this great migration.

GILBERT: My father moved us here in 1942 and we moved to 1150 Eaton Road.

FISHER: He came out of Hurt, Virginia.

His dad was a sharecropper.

My father is a retiree from the United States Postal Service.

He did serve in the military, he was in the Korean War.

He was a paratrooper.

They came up here from living in...

I thought that was a shed.

It was a one or two-room structure that 13 people lived in.

The first time he saw a tub, a flushing toilet, to him that was great.

That was smiley time!

He came to Barry Farm and then he learned, wow, it's better than what I had.

EAGLIN: Everybody had somebody who lived in the South and Washington was clearly a focal point.

My parents were college educated, they were educated in New Orleans.

They came north, seeking jobs.

When FDR came in, he reopened the federal government to minorities.

So, when they got here, um, they could get good jobs and they did.

WALSH: My mother's name was Jean Stryjewski.

When I graduated from high school, I went to DC Teachers College... And sometimes we were in class together.

We graduated together, she walked in front of me, and, um, we crossed the stage together.

And it took her a while, but she not only told me education was important, she made sure I understood that she meant it.

FISHER: While they had opportunity, that was a mild smokescreen over the reality of prejudices and segregation that was still surrounding them.

That togetherness, how they supported one another... Well, a lot of that was strategizing how to survive when you walked outside the community.

It may be a long time ago to me, but it was real to him.

GILBERT: If you live in America, how the hell are you gonna get away from racism?

That's the only thing you knew.

You know your place, you know if that's the school that you had to go to, you know you couldn't get a job.

We couldn't do anything.

There were no Black bus drivers, there were no Black people delivering potato chip trucks.

You didn't have the intelligence to be a quarterback in America.

I don't want to talk about racism anymore.

Please don't ask me no more about it because what they did, it ain't right.

♪ BAEZ: We'll walk hand in hand.

♪ ♪ We'll walk hand in hand someday.

♪ REV.

FISHER: Our parents and our grandparents told us about the times they had to hide under the beds in their shacks because the KKK was shooting into their homes.

They would tell us how they could look out and see the moon shining through the bullet holes in the walls.

So, we knew about that era.

We knew what used to be, we knew how we did not have to go through that so we had an appreciation for the gains that we had.

So, when I was on a bus and somebody acted like they didn't want me sitting next to them... By that time I knew by law that I had a right to because my mother told us to.

And I would just sit there and ignore them.

PRINCE: In 1954, students from the Barry Farm Dwellings challenged DC Board of Education segregation rules that prevented them from attending the local junior high school in Anacostia.

Led by the Jennings family, they fought that case all the way to the Supreme Court where a unanimous decision in Bolling v. Sharpe desegregated DC Public Schools.

WILEY: The civil rights activism that was happening in the Barry Farm public housing community was born out of tenants activism.

WALSH: My mother was a political activist, so I was there.

At any point, I could come home and some people would be at our house and they would be having meetings about various things.

One lady I remember was, Ms. Etta Horn who was the President of the National Welfare Rights Organization.

HORN-DINES: When she first started out I think it was, um, you know, just a group of neighborhood ladies.

They were just fed up.

HORN: We had a welfare group coming up in the District of Columbia.

We had to get a group of people to be in the welfare committee.

We called ourselves the Barry Farm Group of Welfare.

We had to go around and get people involved and find out what their problems were to talk about them and we did that.

PRINCE: By the 1960s, conditions in the dwellings started to deteriorate and the city neglected basic upkeep, yet investigators continued to conduct home visits on the complex to make sure welfare recipients did not have employment or men living in the house.

Jobs for working-age men would have made some women ineligible for public assistance.

HORN-DINES: They come to your house, knock on the door.

They want to check your house and, and see who was there.

HORN: You didn't have any rights, the way I looked at it.

We didn't have no rights at all.

If the investigator came out and says, "Well, I think you were doing so and so.

You are doing so and so."

You were just in fear.

I have that fear.

As I'm laying watching my TV, he goes all through my house, he goes in my refrigerator.

He goes in my pantry, looks on them.

He goes in and looks behind the furnace room.

He goes upstairs and looks under the bed.

He goes in my children's room, looks under their bed, under my bed, in the children's laundry bin, and in the closet.

It left me so angry.

AMOS: "Are you happy with the way you are living?"

That's a question they asked.

"Are you happy the way they are?"

And they would say, "No, of course, we're not."

"Okay, then we have, you know, you have to do something about it."

HORN: We were there to say we're tired of that.

PRINCE: Etta Mae Horn, rallied a group of women to demand better treatment for Barry Farm residents.

Known as the "Band of Angels", their activism ended the home investigations, but they did not stop there.

HORN: We have rights together.

Our liberty, dignity, justice, and democracy.

And that dignity goes a long way.

PRINCE: Horn's home in the Barry Farm dwellings became a meeting point for students, organizers, and movement leaders.

HORN-DINES: She would open the home up to, you know, you come down and somebody sleeping on the sofa.

It's like, "Oh, you'll be staying here for a while."

WALSH: But out here, you can bet your bottom dollar, everybody knew when they were having a meeting.

HORN: Cause we were sitting down talking about what was happening, what was really a serious and beautiful beginning.

It made you feel wonderful, it made you feel good.

You were doing something.

PRINCE: The Barry Farm Band of Angels expanded.

First as a citywide network, then nationally.

Horn traveled the country, testified to Congress, and advised Martin Luther King, Jr. as she became the leader of the National Welfare Rights Organization.

HORN: Our kids would say to me, "Mom, aren't you afraid?"

Of what?

Either you do it or you don't.

If you believe in what you're doing, you can die for it.

♪ GROUP: When it all goes down.

♪ ♪ When it all goes down.

♪♪ BUGGS: My name's Steven Herrion, original Junk Yard Band member.

CALVERT: Stuart Calvert, bass player.

ARRINGTON: Don "Blue Eye" Arrington, I play the drums.

POWELL: Vernell Powell, Congo Player, Junk Yard Band.

Original Barry Farms.

GROUP: Junk Yard Band.

BUGGS: We went out, started looking for buckets and cans.

MAN: All right, ladies and gentlemen.

BUGGS: And started playing around the neighborhood.

MAN: All the way live from Southeast DC.

Barry Farms.

Junk Yard Band!

INTERVIEWER: What made y'all pick Go-Go music to be the form of music that you wanted to play?

MEMBER: Living here in Barry Farms.

That's all we heard, that's all we listened to.

♪ GROUP: Let me see your body going, ♪ ♪ "Creak, creak, creak".

♪♪ MEMBER 2: We went around the area, started grabbing milk crates, sticks.

Started building our own instruments.

BUGGS: We played our very first show at Barry Farms Rec Center.

We charged a dime a person to get in.

I think we made, like, what, $800?

I don't know, but we made a lot of dimes.

It was a lot of dimes.

(group laughs).

ANNOUNCER: The Junk Yard Band!

PRINCE: In the 1980s, this group of young men from Barry Farm traded in their homemade instruments for the real thing and put their own stamp on Go-Go, the city's unique funk music.

DEL PIELAGO: Junk Yard helped to shape and take Go-Go to that next level in the 80s when they were really coming up and making their mark in the district.

♪ ♪ MCDONALD: When the Go-Go bands were there... (chuckles).

The streets were desolate.

Everybody was going to see the bands.

GLOVER: Junk Yard is my favorite band.

That's how Backyard started, from Junk Yard.

Just, like, really wanting to be those guys.

♪ GROUP: Hot bread and butter right now!

♪♪ BUGGS: All that used to go on, right there at Barry Farms where most people were scared to come to.

CALVERT: Everybody from the neighborhood want to come and just be around it and be a part of it.

People would be scared to come there but as soon as you had these certain events, they could come and feel safe.

It's definitely a unifying force.

MATTHEWS: Junk Yard used to always come to Barry Farms.

I thought that was wonderful.

BELT: It was so cool to, like, see that they came and performed for the community, like weekly, so I'd be there.

♪ MAN: Believe in me as I believe in you.

♪♪ PRINCE: The Junk Yard Band emerged as a pillar of DC's beloved Go-Go music.

They're deep ties to Barry Farm help solidify the neighborhood as the epicenter for Go-Go.

WILEY: Historically, Go-Go has been a really important piece of DC culture and as DC continues to change from the "Chocolate City" of the 70s, we understand the importance of that Go-Go history too, and where it came from.

ARRINGTON: Wouldn't be no Junk Yard without Barry Farms, cause we are Barry Farms.

♪ GROUP: Round and round we go.

♪ ♪ Where it stops, nobody knows.

♪ ♪ Let me hear ya go.

♪♪ BUGGS: My memories from Barry Farm, being in the band, it kept me from being out in trouble in the streets of Barry Farm.

Cause Barry Farm, back in the day, was, was, uh, you know, real, real, real terrifying.

It was a violent neighborhood, you know what I'm saying?

PRINCE: Across the United States, big cities, small cities, and towns grappled with poverty, insecurity, and drugs.

Poorer urban communities were particularly vulnerable.

MCDONALD: That's when it took a turn for the worse with the drugs, when crack came into play.

AMOS: Crack cocaine came in.

How disruptive and how horrible it was.

MCDONALD: I remember when I was little.

Yeah, they had fights.

Nobody got shot.

REV.

FISHER: Those who had been there longest started moving out.

So, uh, grass is not being grown.

Fences were broken down, glass was in the alley.

Couldn't play ball in the alley.

Before, everybody used to sweep the alley.

Cars would be raced up and down the street.

PRINCE: The 1980s were marked by limited job opportunities, cuts to public funding, and privatization but media attention focused on drugs and the public policy response focused on punishment.

BUSH: This, this is crack cocaine seized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the street from the White House.

We need more prisons, more jails, more courts, more prosecutors.

Nowhere is it worse than our public housing projects.

REV.

FISHER: It was a different world, we just wanted out.

FISHER JR.: This was a community that was neglected by city leaders for generations.

You can't just name issues of, of drugs and poverty, and crime without thinking about the larger social contexts in which these things happen.

When people feel as though they're back us up against the wall and they're not being listened to that they might resort to taking drastic measures.

SHORTER: People could make a lot of money when they didn't have this access to money before, so...

If you can make money, you're going to make money and that's what people did.

They had an opportunity to make money.

They started flipping it and they was making it.

But the people on a higher level allowed these things to happen cause it padded their pockets.

We can't bring drugs into this country, so it wasn't our fault.

I ain't got a helicopter, I ain't got no boat.

They're putting the guns in our hands and, and, and, put the drugs in our veins.

PRINCE: By the end of the century, decades of neglect had taken a profound toll on the Barry Farm Dwellings.

As landlord, the city had allowed the neighborhood to deteriorate.

SMITH: Barry Farms, itself, fell into very serious disarray.

The buildings were in dilapidated form.

By the end, some of them had been shut off because they couldn't operate them anymore.

BELT: Deplorable conditions.

We had a lot of rodents, especially towards end because the property became vacant, more and more people moving out.

MATTHEWS: To have to fight to even get your maintenance things done inside your house is a fight.

ODOM: The conditions got worse the Band-Aids were falling off and we found that there was no intentions to make it better.

BELT: But I did accept it because it was either that or be homeless.

PRINCE: In the minds of many Washington residents, the neighborhood became synonymous with drugs and crime.

A negative stereotype solidified.

HALL: First, when they told us we were moving to Barry Farms I was scared to death because of the rumors that I've heard.

FISHER JR.: The first thing I had heard about Barry Farms was that it was a community that was rife with crime and poverty.

ODOM: Yeah, it was a little nerve-wracking.

You know, I'm from DC but still.

This is where we're bringing our family, our children.

Once we got there we didn't have any issues.

HALL: Once I got there it wasn't true at all.

MAN: Barry Farms is not a bad place that people make it seem.

It have its ups and downs, but it's still overall a good place.

A lot of people need these houses.

BELT: It was a lot of families here that's like, "My family over there.

Family, family, family."

MCDONALD: There was still a closeness there, even when I moved back when my mother took ill.

Still a closeness.

The news makes it seem as though it's the worst place on earth to be.

I beg to differ.

MAXINE: Hi, I'm Maxine.

JANE: And I'm Jane.

INTERVIEWER: How long have you lived in Barry Farm?

MAXINE: All our lives.

WOMAN: I've been down here for 15 years.

MAN: Like 20 years.

WOMAN: Bout eight or nine years.

MAN: 43 years.

WOMAN: 17 years.

WOMAN 2: I've lived here since 2001 and a half.

INTERVIEWER: What's your message for all those people running for office?

What do you want them to do for Barry Farm?

WOMAN: Playgrounds for the kids, learning centers, computer centers.

MAXINE: I wanna see better schools, better housing, all that.

More jobs.

WOMAN: Help people get jobs.

WOMAN 2: Jobs for the teenagers.

JANE: Yes, 'cause I need a job, bad.

FISHER JR.: It seems to me that the evolution of US cities always happens on the back of Black communities.

The destruction, the demise of Black communities becomes an acceptable sacrifice as cities seek to develop and to grow.

DEL PIELAGO: The idea is that because the properties are in such bad condition, the city needs to step in and redevelop these properties and because the city does not have the funding to do this, they partner with private developers to do so.

FISHER JR.: You can pull that public housing property into the private real estate market through mixed-income housing.

SMITH: The city ends up owning some very large parts of land in our city where land has become more and more valuable now.

DEL PIELAGO: So, it really is a land-grab and wealthy developers have benefitted off of this.

It's lead to displacement.

What was once known as "Chocolate City" is no longer a "Chocolate City".

WOMAN: The reason for this meeting tonight... HALL: They put notices on our doors saying to come to these meetings.

WOMAN: My office is responsible for the procurement process.

ODOM: Yeah, we started getting notices.

There were meetings.

BELT: Meetings happening about what's going on in Barry Farm.

That it will be demolished.

HALL: Every meeting I attended, I'd always ask questions and most of the people didn't know the answers to.

WOMAN: Today's meeting is for us to hear from the developers.

MATTHEWS: Those meetings really, it was like going around a mulberry bush.

HALL: And they just told us a lot of lies.

WOMAN: They are not going to be able to answer questions about your individual household, entry criteria, who's moving, because we're nowhere near that process.

RESIDENT: I want to talk to developers and tell them that we don't want development right now.

WOMAN: We got 7,000 people on the wait list who are not even in public housing yet.

MAN: Why are you only building 30 units for all these people?

Where are they gonna go?

WOMAN: If you want to talk about something else today is not the day.

BELT: it felt like nothing we can do as residents.

Um, it's like, it's gonna happen.

WOMAN: I'm asking y'all.

Are we gonna listen, are we gonna respect the developers?

RESIDENT: No.

(overlapping chatter).

WOMAN: Regarding our community, we shall not be moved!

GROUP: We shall not.

We shall not be moved!

We shall not.

We shall not be moved!

MAATTHEWS: You still, at the end, all you know is that you're gonna have to get ready to go eventually.

ODOM: That was the biggest thing.

That just kept echoing in my head that we'd have to move from our home.

HALL: So we were just told to be ready to move.

It was just a mess.

It was a mess.

MATTHEWS: The relocation process, it was a nightmare.

You were pretty much just on your own.

HALL: Uh, they gave us 30 days and I guess I didn't pack quick enough cause they sent help to pack and they just threw the stuff into boxes.

DEL PIELAGO: Residents at Barry Farm have been displaced from their property for years now without any real idea when they'll be able to come back.

ODOM: While the developer says, "Yeah, you'll come back.

We promise, we promise."

There's still nothing actionable to that, there's nothing legal.

BELT: We need something concrete saying we have a right to return.

MATTHEWS: You knew the plan was to get us out and I think the other plan was not to get so many of us back.

HALL: I was told now that most of the buildings they're building now, they gotta have so much percentage from low income.

They low income is $59,000.

I don't know, very few people that I know make $59,000 a year.

And somebody like me that makes much, much less than that a year...

They would never let me live there.

That's a useless conversation.

Useless.

(construction noises).

MCDONALD: That's where I was born, that's where I was raised.

When I saw that it was being torn down it's like a part of me went with it.

EAGLIN: I saw four steps, cement steps and I knew exactly where we were, which was right near where our house was.

And it was all gone.

It's like watching my early childhood just erased.

Gone.

I grew up on those steps, I learned how to count on those steps, okay?

GRIFFIN: As far as being demolished, I was told about it.

I, I, I, I, I wanted somebody to take me over there and just let me see this.

This will no longer...

This will no longer be "Chocolate City".

You can forget about it.

EAGLIN: Well, there should be something that documents the lives of people who lived and worked here, in this city.

To have that just wiped away and gone as though they were never here, okay, um, I think is a loss.

We hoped that, yeah, there would be some kind of museum or something there that would commemorate the lives of the people who, who lived in this area for, for decades.

BELT: My name is Detrice Belt and I serve as the President of the Barry Farms Tenants Association.

If places like Barry Farm are denied protection, what do we lose as a city?

PRINCE: In 2019, with the destruction of Barry Farm already underway, former residents organized to plead their case in front of Washington's Historic Preservation review board.

If successful, at least some of the homes will be preserved as Washington, DC landmarks.

BELT: It was like, "Wait a minute, we do need to save something.

Let's have something to look back on and, you know, keep for us, and preserve and just knowing that the history to them was very important.

Despite the fact that so much of what has been familiar about DC has changed around us.

Declaring Barry Farm a historic landmark will ensure that our history is remembered, that our stories are told, and that we will see our reflections in this community for years to come.

HEATH: I know there are a lot of people here.

How many people want to speak today?

Okay, we'll hear from all of you.

WILEY: The energy in the room was buzzing.

It was electric.

There were so many people who came in to give testimony or to support the nomination.

I challenge the Historic Preservation review board to stand with the former residents of Barry Farm by designating the remaining structures part of a historic district.

HORSEY: I probably should know this, but I don't.

How many buildings are currently inhabited?

SHOENFELD: None of the buildings are inhabited.

All of the tenants have been evicted as of a few months ago.

DEL PIELAGO: This unfortunately was happening as the city was actively demolishing, uh, Barry Farm and they had demolished a significant amount.

The only buildings remaining were on Stevens Road.

So, the application that we put forth was to preserve the remaining buildings at Barry Farm.

SHOENFELD: We believe that this set of buildings, which frames Stevens Road, sufficiently relay the sites history and the intentions in its design.

This is an effort to historically designate some of the buildings at Barry Farm Dwellings, the public housing project so that those buildings could not be torn down.

DEL PIELAGO: Nobody gave up.

We pushed.

We moved the hearts of the Historic Preservation review board to say, "Wait a second, these guys are right!"

MAN: What remains of Barry Farm is too important in the development of this city to go completely under the bulldozer and be forgotten.

WOMAN: The community has noticed and a lot of pressure to sacrifice the history of communities east of the river.

MAN: Not only should Barry Farm receive a historic designation, but it is a historic site.

MAN 2: Have a good day.

DEL PIELAGO: This rag-tag band of organizers and residents put together a very strong argument for a historic designation.

BELT: The only question before us is whether you Historic Preservation review board members will give it the landmark status and recognition that it deserves.

PRINCE: In January 2020, the long-awaited results finally came in.

The petition was approved, five of the dwellings would be preserved.

INTERVIEWER: How did you feel when you learned of it?

WILEY: I felt vindicated when I found out Barry Farm had been approved as a local landmark.

But I also felt this is just one step of many and I knew that we would have a lot more work to do.

BELT: We're hoping that some of the units could be for a museum.

MATTHEWS: Artwork.

REV.

FISHER: Old furniture that we used to have.

MATTHEWS: The history.

POWELL: Put it back exactly the way it was.

ARRINGTON: Let us play more down there, you know?

GILBERT: We're teaching that to our grandchildren.

MCDONALD: Just the fact that there's this one small portion there to hold onto.

FISHER JR.: Is Barry Farm a sacred space?

Yes, I would certainly think that and, and talk about Barry Farm as a sacred space.

If you want to talk about the sacred in terms of remembering the place that Barry Farms has in DC and American history and the lives that were represented in that community as well as the lives that were destroyed as a result of some of the policies that led up to the community's downfall.

I think that Barry Farm is very much a sacred space.

HORN: Well, I'll just use an expression of the blood.

WOMAN: Yeah.

HORN: As your temper rises.

WOMAN: Yeah, it's blood, pressure, sweat, and tears.

HORN: Right.

And, um, the sweat were, you know, how you just, you work yourself to death and the tears were when you had accomplished something.

Cause you didn't cry before, you fought hard, and when you won, when you'd say, "Well Lord, something happening."

You accomplished something.

You felt like crying cause you were happy.

♪ MAN: Hit em up!

♪ (scatting).

♪ TR!

♪ ♪ Mmm, it's your birthday.

♪ ♪ Ruff it off!

♪ ♪ Yeah!

♪ ♪ I said ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff, ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff, ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff it off, right, right.

♪ ♪ (scatting).

♪ ♪ Ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff, ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff, ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff it off.

♪ ♪ Ruff, ruff it off.

♪ ♪ A microphone check, here I go into another.

♪ ♪ Jealous of the brother with the 92 Cruiser.

♪ ♪ Peace to the brothers with a whole lot of lip.

♪ ♪ We doing our dance cause yo, we're on this tip.

♪ ♪ We ruffin it off... ♪♪