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Today is July 21st, 2024. We are at Malcolm X Park, also known as Meridian Hill Park. Um, my name is Daniel Kerr. Could you tell us your name? My name is Angelyn Whitehurst. And could you tell me about your connection to this park? Well, the earliest connection, I don't exactly remember. I was my mother carried me in her belly, and this was a park that she came to visit quite frequently while she was pregnant. And after I was born, this was the park where she and my father would come. And they took many, many photographs. Um, the park does not look the way that it looks now. It was one of the most beautiful parks in the whole United States. Beautiful shrubbery, trees, flowers, plants. It was just so elegant.

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And where did you live? What? What? I lived about, uh, maybe four blocks from here. Uh, 14. I think it's 1449 Oak Street Northwest. They knocked the building down last year, and they put up a cheap little prefab mouse trap apartment. They charge about 2400 a month for for one bedroom. Mhm. Terrible. And I hate to do this, but like, what time frame are we talking about. Oh my goodness. Um I was born in 1952 so that was, that was more than, oh my goodness, more than 70 years ago.

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I see. So you were, more or less, raised in the neighborhood, and this park was part of your childhood? Um, actually, my parents lived on Gerrard Street, and then they moved to Oak Street. Um, but. Yeah. Early life. Yes, was here, and we stayed in this neighborhood until 1958, and we moved to Peabody Street northwest. The 100 block near the train tracks. I see, I see. And so, uh, the park you're remembering is from the 1950s. From the 1950s. Beautiful park. In fact, all of 16th Street was just absolutely gorgeous year round. Um, and in the spring, you had the tulips. And then, uh, what are the azaleas and hydrangeas? You had so many beautiful flowers. And one of the things that I did, and I remember this because I got in trouble for it, is on the way home, my friend Lucy Murphy would walk me to school and sometimes back home. Most of the times I know I couldn't do it by myself, but I would pick people's flowers out of their yards, on 16th Street. Like these buildings were still here and everybody had gorgeous gardens and flowers. So I would pick flowers and bring them home to my mother. And my mother was like, where did you get those flowers? And I said, oh, I picked them. And she said, oh, no, you can't do that. Those belong to somebody else. But I think I did it a couple of times again anyway. I didn't see anything wrong with it. They were there for me.

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Nice. Okay. And so what was your kind of block in your neighborhood like? Um. I would say my block on Oak Street was multicultural. Um, there was Lucy Murphy's family, and her grandfather had a second marriage. But they were, from what you call a historically, historically legacy family. And her step grandmother, Mrs. Murphy, gave me piano lessons. She was also a very educated person and I don't remember all of her background, but she knew, she knew so many important historical figures in black history. You know, like she knew, um, I want to say. One of the. The, the man who invented all the things for the peanut. George Washington Carver. And she knew people like that. And she would tell my mother about them and even describe because she was a musician, she would describe the tone of their voice and how they spoke and the type of language that that they use, because it was, you know, I have a southern culture, other people have a northern culture. But she was very when she gave details, she gave that kind of detail. Like Carver, George Washington Carver, she said he had a very soft, melodic voice. Um, and I think I've heard other people say, another person that I met when, I met when I was coming up, Lois Mailou Jones, she had a melodic voice also, but she also spoke French, and it was like light and airy and just lifted you up. And so you said multicultural. What do you mean by that? Multicultural. Oh, because there were people of African-American descent, East Indian descent, American Indian descent. And on 16th Street you had a splattering of white folks because the '68 riots had not happened yet.

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So it was predominantly, predominantly a black neighborhood from different regions around people from diaspora. Yes. Yeah. Okay. But but predominantly professional and and middle class, would you say, or. For, for black middle class. Yes. Yeah. And most of the women, some of them were school teachers, like Mrs. Murphy, I think she taught school. But some of them, I guess they were educated, but they were housewives, because during that time there was this thing about it being a mother, having to be at the home and a black woman not having to work, that was like really arriving. You know, even though that all changed for the rest of the country 20 years later. Right? No one stays at home.

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Yes. And and so when you were in the park, who, who, who were the people that were there with you? Like, who were the park goers in the 1950s? Can you remember? Um, I remember walking with my mother and my father, and then later on, my sisters and brothers and maybe some of the neighborhood kids would come and go. And there was a little boy in my apartment building. His name was Poncho. I don't know what happened to Poncho, but Poncho would be one that would come with us. And he, his his family, was they were Central American or Caribbean, but they spoke Spanish, and his father had bought him this big Mexican hat like the mariachi singers wear. Yeah. And he would wear that hat. And did the kind of composition of folks kind of reflect the composition of your neighborhood, the park goers or so. Yes.

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There were quite a few African Americans and and black park goers in the 50s. Yes, because we lived close to the park. So from Oak Street, if you come up to 16th Street, you hang a right, you get to Arkansas. And there was this big hill there. And I remember that hill because buttercups would grow there. So every spring around Easter, when the buttercups were up, we would go. All the kids, we would go and pick buttercups. And there was this thing about it would make you laugh if you took the buttercup and rubbed it under your chin. And so that was such a big deal that it's silly now, but it was a big deal then. It was like, that was magic. And then to bring the buttercups home, um, to our parents, to our mothers. That was special. And so, as you moved out of the neighborhood, you still would come back to this park, right? Or. Mhm. All throughout the years, um.

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Did you see and what were some of the kind of transformations that you saw over the 60s or 70s in particular? Well, the biggest change came before the 70s and there had been like people gathering for protests. And then after '68, the great migration of, of white people leaving the city. Although I don't think they left because of the riots. They were moving out before then, because they were moving to the suburbs with the air conditioning, the Rambler houses, Space Age, and the '68 riots just sped up that that transition for them and the neighborhoods. Some of the houses were boarded up or they were rented out for little or nothing. And that changed the culture of the neighborhood. And then plus the school was segregated. Um, and that and then became an all black school. Which, which school?

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Banneker Elementary School, which is the first elementary school I went to where I, I don't know if I told you this before, but my teacher, Mrs. Viner. Um, there were 2 or 3 of us African American kids, she had to sit on the church pew for the whole year. The only time we sat at the tables with the other kids was on Parent's Day. And so I went through kindergarten and first grade pretty much not learning anything, and I didn't really learn to read 'til I was in the second grade. And I had one year to catch up before I got to the third grade, which I did, with a little help from my teachers and my friends, because my mother had 3 or 4 other little kids, she didn't have time to help me. I shouldn't say it like that, but she was busy. And so how did the park change as these neighborhood changes were taking place? Um, after the '68 riots, you didn't see white people in the park at all? It became a hangout. Um, it became a place at night time where people would be up here drinking and boozing and smoking dope and doing whatever they wanted to do, and then it would get a life where everyone would come if there was like a protest, like for the Wilmington Ten or, um, protests about things that were going on in the city with housing. It was a gathering place and it was considered, it was considered a safe haven for, for people who were trying to do things but needed not to be seen by, um, city government officials or the police or anyone who was not for what they were about planning or doing. Angela Davis I think when, when, whenever she was in town, she still would come to this park. And she would speak.

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Yes. At the gatherings. Yes. And so, um, were you in town around 1968 or?

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Yes, I was here. I was in high school. You were in high school? Yeah, I was in the 11th grade. 10th grade? Finishing up the 10th grade. That was around the time the name started to be, the park started to be called Malcolm X Park.

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After that, because it was a gathering place, and it was just, I don't know specifically who made that decision, but it was like anything that had a white name that was negative, pretty much like what they're doing now when renaming bases and highways. The community here decided this would be called Malcolm X Park. The Park Service did not participate in that, did not like that, and refused to recognize the name. But it's still that, it's still Malcolm X Park. So it was sort of like the park was conquered and it was symbolic for for change, symbolic for a type of freedom that we didn't have before under the old home rule system, with the commissioners, we were in charge. The people were going to rename the park whether the National Park Service liked it or not. Right. Because it belongs to the people. It doesn't belong to the Park Service, not really. They're just caretakers. And do you have any memories of the kind of the early days of the drum circles?

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Um. Yeah, a lot of that started with you'd have to ask Vernon Suggs and Perry Suggs and, um, Melvin Deal and the people in the arts community because they're really the ones that started having activities. Um, and some people would say this was a forerunner to the Head Start program. Actually, the Panthers started the Head Start program and the federal government took it over. But, it was about getting people to come together, to work together, to learn together, and to doing constructive things that would children and family-oriented. And so people would come here with their drums, and people could come to learn the drums and just get together and play the drums, and people came here just to enjoy. And it's sort of like continued on since that time. The last person who really was in charge of, sort of like, organizing was, um, his last name is Marshall, his sister's name is Turi Marshall, and he died in 2019. About. Yeah, he died a week after my baby sister died in May of 2019. And he would stay, he had a network where he could stay in touch with drummers and activities and would be here and would anchor it down. And what was the significance of the drum or learning to drum at that time? The drum is the most important form of communication to black people, as symbolic and even in Africa. It's like messages, you get it by the drum and it's like you don't want to report what we're doing, we don't want you to know what we're doing, we send it out the message by the drum. Um, and if you go, I always like to talk about the Jola people in West Africa. In the evening, they do the most melodic drumming, and it's so peaceful, but then there are different tones to it that means different things. So it's communication and that was one way to communicate across a whole country, a continent, was through the drum. And so that's what drumming does, it is a form of communication. Now, what it means now, I'm not so sure that there are specific beats that convey messages, because I tend to think that some of that is lost, except for people who study drumming. Like if you want to study the Nigerian drummers, the Sudanese drummers, the Kenyan drummers, the Mau Mau, all of those had they had meanings and I don't know what they are, but certain beats, certain things might tell us someone's death, somebody's birth. And do you have any understanding of the kinds of regions that were influencing the drum patterns here in the park or?

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No, not really. I know when I work with affiliated with the DC Black Repertory Theater because I helped them write grants and they had drummers who were African American, but who had spent a lot of them, had spent time in South Africa with some of the tribal groups there because they were involved in the anti-apartheid movement. They had spent time in Mozambique, so they were familiar with the drumming there, and they had learned the rhythms and beats and then the DC Black repertory with Melvin Dale. But they used drumming in the classes to teach the beats and the rhythms, which was different from Swan Lake and ballet uh, and even, you know, pop, pop, jazz. So it was a part of re-reprogramming, reorientating. It might be considered, it could be considered the first massive learning tool to decolonization of thought. Mm. Powerful. And so that was that, that the drum and the drum circle and the drumming was kind of critical to this kind of being the epicenter of the African liberation Yes movement and ALD, African Liberation Day.

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It's symbolic. And you say the drum, I mean, immediately it gets people's attention. Even now, if you look at posters for African American events, Caribbean events, you see a drum somewhere. My, my understanding of of you as well as the others is that there was a lot of circulation between DC and Caribbean and African countries um, and certainly I think this place, as you said, was one of the places where folks would come to one of the destination spots in that that. Well, the Park Service did not have enough people to kick anybody out, right. And if they did, they would have to call MPD. And I don't think that the MPD during that early time period, because it was transitional, we didn't have that many black police officers. They weren't going to come in here, especially at nighttime. I don't think it was going to happen. Mhm. Mhm. And who, what were some of the kind of the political gatherings that you recall from that would kind of gather in the park during the 60s, 70s period? And what were their kind of, you know, what was their mindset at the time?

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It was a place where people could call for folks to meet at the last minute. It could, it could be dealing with housing and any type of protest like that. It could be something a protest against the mayor, the city council, it could be something national. Um, and they would always have like a Malcolm X Day or an African Liberation Day or Pan-African Day activities like that. But it was like I said, basically it was a place like if somebody got put out of their house, someone could put on the radio, we're all going to meet at, if you're concerned about this issue, come to Malcolm X Park, you know, at 5:00, 6:00 or whatever. And people would come and they would show up. So it would kind of connect the very, very local to kind of the international, the politics of Yeah. Certainly we see from the photographic exhibit on the truck the placards about anti-apartheid, etc.,

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This is where a lot of that occurred, people met here. And even to this day, um, like before this past year, the Palestinian, the groups that were supporting Palestinian youth so that they could get visas to leave the country to go to school. They would meet here, and I had been here for that and a lot of other people. Now, I'm not so sure. Most of the protests are sitting around the white House or the Congress or someplace more focused nationally, but not so much the park. But that's temporary. And if I, if I understand it, there were, you know, the the, um, American Indian Movement used to stop here on their marches and their walks, Mhm Um, that this was kind of a gathering place for it was bringing together all of these movements that.

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Were everybody could interact with one another. Kind of intersectional, and Yes, To me, it seems like it might have been a kind of a originating place for this very idea of intersectional politics.

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It was because a lot of the people who came here, they'd never been outside of the United States. They didn't know anyone other than their own people, meaning they were either white Americans or they were African Americans, indigenous to this country, um, except for their slave ship. So it gave people a chance to to meet each other and also to learn about each other and to see where their commonalities are. You know, like with the Palestinian youth. People my age could relate to the restrictions we had, um, when there was segregation, because they're pretty much the same. The only difference was one is called segregation in America, and the other one was called rules and regulations under the Israeli authority, but they are all some type of, um, what um, Doctor Glenda Hoover and Epiphany calls, it's a type of enslavement. But we could meet and work for change because we're not our minds. We're not, we're not slaves, our bodies were not changed, but we were enslaved. And so to change, that part of that transformation, for everyone is to know what it is that we all are going through. Even though we have different terminology for it, it is still the same thing, and the root cause is still the same, and how it's changed is the same. It's just different countries, different languages. But yeah. So what you're saying intersectionality. Yes. One photo I that's up in that exhibit that I, I'm wondering if you might have any understanding of is it looks like there's a group of Buddhist drummers um, that was in maybe around 1978-ish. You know who to ask about that? No.

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Is Lucy Murphy. Okay. Because she is very much a part of the, um. Well, there there are different types. Which one is the SGI, which allows people who are non born Buddhists to be a part of it. And then there is the traditional Buddhist hierarchy, but she would she would know about that because, um, they like other groups from Tibet, Nepal, they would all come here and drum and it was a chance for people to say hello and introduce themselves. But it's also a chance, it was the only place I can think of where you could come in the city and have something that's unique to you and your culture, and you could do it without a permit and without interference. Mhm.

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Only place. I imagine then the, the drum bringing these different groups together. Increasingly I imagine during the 70s there was kind of a Caribbean influence. Yeah, we had a lot of uh. Latino, Latina.

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Latino because of Adams Morgan, Columbia Road, so it was a gathering place for different groups at different times. It's like a little, well, Adams Morgan because it's just right there across the street, it was like considered like a little international, global city because you had people from everywhere, a lot from the Caribbean, a lot from Central America, and the balance changed over the years when, um, there were wars in El Salvador and you had a lot of El Salvadorians here, and then people from Honduras and Guatemala and so you could always gauge by the numbers what was going on in someone's country by the increase of population from those countries. And, um, it was interesting that there in the most amazing people, because they all speak a Spanish language, but each country, Spanish is different, and they were able to come here and forge a language that they all can understand. So, um, to me, I find that very interesting. Mhm. What do you think? Um, in terms you talked about how the park is still a place and a place, a gathering place. Mhm. Do you think there, that it will continue to be that way in the future? Are there any fundamental transformations that have changed that or?

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I think as long as the National Park Service does not start requiring people to apply for permits, it will be an open and free space. Mhm. You know um, and, and it's a unique space because you can come in here and you don't have to sign in. You don't have to fill out for a permit. You don't have a time limit. You know you can technically, and this is what happened, this park housed a lot of homeless people for a number of years and probably still does, but not as many as it used to. Um, but I think hopefully it will stay the same. Mhm. And so if I am hearing you correctly, there's part of a kind of sadness of the loss of the kind of beauty of the park.

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Absolutely. I like the beauty of the park but I also, I can, I can live without it because having a space for people to come and meet at any time or any situation without restraint is more important than having the flowers. Thank you very much. Thank you, Doctor Kerr.