Ghosts of DC The lost and untold history of Washington

Our buddy and early GoDCer John has an excellent book out on Frederick Douglass. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. He’s an excellent writer and he was kind enough to share an excerpt with the GoDC community. There is no record of a lynching having ever occurred within today’s city limits of Washington, D.C. If the malediction ... Read More »

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. For black newspaper boys holding their street corners throughout downtown Washington, on Thursday January 13, 1870 there was a new paper to hawk, a paper uniquely speaking to their emerging place in the country and city, “The New Era.” We forget Frederick Douglass came up in the streets of 1830′s ... Read More »

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. Arlington National Cemetery, the pre-Civil War home of Robert E. Lee, is a short Metro ride from Washington, DC. This week was my second visit in a year to Section 60 for the burial of a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps who gave his last measure of devotion to country ... Read More »

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. Frederick Douglass was no born fool, simpleton, sucker, or gump. He came up from slavery, he came up in the the streets of Jacksonian Baltimore. As has been better said by others before the “overly honorific public memory of Douglass belies a life entirely defined by action—sometimes action-hero type action. Frederick Douglass ... Read More »

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. Forget what you’ve heard, or rather haven’t heard or yet read. Frederick Douglass was a Howard Universityman through and through. Douglass was not just a lion, he was a Bison. Douglass raised funds and donated his money to Howard. He received an honorary doctorate from the university. He testified before Congress advocating for the university. While ... Read More »

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. While trying to confirm President Hayes visited Douglass at Cedar Hill, I came across this news item telling of President Grover Cleveland (the 22nd and, later, the 24th President) and his trusted friend Daniel S. Lamont getting, what appears to be, lost in 19th century Anacostia, lost on the Southside. In Life and Times Douglass lauds ... Read More »

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. Frederick Douglass was a self-made man about town during his years in Washington. He was  a frequent guest of the White House the through various Presidential administrations after the Civil War, he served as adviser to both black and progress white Senators and Congress men, he often attended and lectured at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal ... Read More »

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. The first black American seated as a member of the United States Senate was Hiram Rhodes Revels representing Mississippi. Revels filled the seat vacated by Jefferson Davis, who left to serve as the President of the Confederate States of America, truly the personification of Lord Byron’s famous line in the long-form poem, ... Read More »

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. I walk the streets, alleys, back-cuts, and lounge on the corners of Anacostia everyday, every hour, every minute. Tour an abandominium or two. Reports and the widely held perceptions of violence and criminality in Anacostia, as I see it and know it, are over-rated. But that ... Read More »