by ©2020 Sarah Becker Colored Rosemont – A Black History Lesson In 1939 Winston Churchill described the Soviets as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma;” German authorities required Jews to wear the Star of David, and black American W.E.B. DuBois published Black Folk, Then and Now: An Essay in the History and Sociology of the Negro Race. Germany invaded Poland; Columbia pictures released “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and Rochester, New York, started a food stamp program. In Alexandria—on June 19—musician and socialite; heiress and white realtor Virginia Fitzhugh Wheat Thomas, Mrs. Augustus Howell Thomas bought “real estate…bounded by Wythe, Payne, West and Pendleton Streets” as part of a privately-funded housing project known as colored Rosemont. “Housing affordability is an issue that disproportionately affects people of color,” Virginia Governor Ralph Northam affirmed in 2019. The U.S. Supreme Court decided Plessy v. Ferguson the racially divisive separate but equal Jim Crow Car Law in 1896. “To Colored People—Own your own home, 5 room houses…dollars down, balance like rent,” the Alexandria Gazette suggested in 1920. In segregated Alexandria most property deeds, most neighborhoods were racially restricted. The result: “[T]here is a scarcity of suitable housing for persons of average means,” American Construction council president Franklin D. Roosevelt told The New York Times in 1925. Mrs. Thomas’ good work predates the U.S. Supreme Court decision Shelley v. Kraemer. “The parties of the first part covenant with the [colored] parties of the second part that they have the right to convey this property to them; that there are no encumbrances [restrictive racial covenants], and that the [colored] parties of the second part shall have quiet and peaceable possession thereof,” the Thomas family Deeds of Bargain and Sale consistently recorded. “Virginia Wheat Thomas was an angel, an abolitionist-minded angel,” Stanley Greene said. …
©2019 Sarah Becker Greenhouse Gases “Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have grown faster in the United States than in the rest of the world…reinforcing calls for unilateral U.S. curbs on the global-warming gas,” The Washington Post wrote in 1989. Today the United States is the world’s second largest carbon emitter. Carbon dioxide molecules, once emitted, remain in the atmosphere for almost a century. Do Americans, Alexandrians for example who reside in the U.S. Route 1 residential corridor adapt to climate change—as President Donald Trump’s environmental policies suggest—or do local, state and federal governments mitigate? At present Alexandria promotes accelerated auto transportation. Six Metro stations are closed for summer repairs. Most U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are human roused—the result of burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) for heat, electricity, and transportation. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (84%), methane (10%), nitrous oxide (4%) and fluorinated gases (2%). According to the Rhodium Group carbon dioxide emissions rose 2.7% in 2018, the second largest annual spike since 2000. “Much of the emissions spike was driven by the continued rise of transportation emissions, now the nation’s top source of emissions.” “The hardening scientific consensus has pushed governments to move toward negotiations for international controls,” The Post continued in 1989. The United Nations Montreal Protocol (ozone) became effective in 1987, the Kyoto Protocol (emission reductions) in 1997. “In 1997 the United States signed a non-binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—primarily carbon dioxide,” The Washington Post reported. Then U.S. carbon dioxide emissions “exceeded the Kyoto target by 18%, or 220 metric tons per year.” The percent of excess continues to grow. Rather than develop mass transit competitively, plan and market its metro stations fittingly, the city of Alexandria encouraged auto-driven streets. It still does knowing that in 1990 “Virginia ranked 19th among the states—and ahead of industrial…
by ©2019 Sarah Becker Walt Whitman and the Civil War “In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish, Of the look at first of the mortally wounded, (of that indescribable look),” poet Walt Whitman wrote in 1867 in Old War Dreams. “Of the dead on their backs, with arms extended wide, I dream, I dream, I dream….Long have they pass’d, faces and trenches and fields, Where through the carnage I moved with a callous composure, or away from the fallen, Onward I sped at the time—but now of their forms at night, I dream, I dream, I dream.” In 1861 the United States offered approximately 40 medical schools and six schools of pharmacy. Despite the seeming sophistication, Civil War hospitals were mostly makeshift. “The [Prince Street] house is commodious, and, for a confiscated dwelling, is very fine,” the Alexandria Gazette noted in 1864. Alexandria’s Civil War hospitals included Prince Street Hospital, Lyceum Hall, Carlyle House, Lee-Fendall House and Episcopal Seminary. Also Prince Street’s L’Ouverture Hospital for colored troops. Medical and other supplies were secured, in part, from Fairfax Street’s Leadbeater & Co. including Lamp Oil, Charcoal, Castile Soap, Laudanum and Morphine Sulph. Virginia seceded from the Union on May 24, 1861, only to find the Federal Army ready to stake an Alexandria claim. Occupied Alexandria, a budding hospital town, served as an Army logistical supply center. It operated alongside the city of Washington, Georgetown and Aquia Creek. “Still sweeping the eye around down the river toward Alexandria, we see, to the right, the locality where the Convalescent Camp stands, with its five, eight, or sometimes ten thousand inmates,” Walt Whitman penned. Whitman, a New Yorker, traveled to Washington in 1862 to search for his brother George, missing in the Battle of Fredericksburg. He called infirmaries the “marrow…
They’re Burning Down the House! By Sarah Becker ©2018 President Donald Trump (R-NY) has done it again, he’s muddled history. On May 25, in a tetchy telephone conversation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump unthinkingly said it was the Canadians, not the British who burned The White House in 1814. The British assault on Washington was in retaliation for an American attack on Ontario, then a British colony. The President referenced the War of 1812 when asked for what reason he claimed incoming Canadian steel and aluminum “a national security” issue. In the early 1800s the United States became inextricably involved in European affairs. Customs duties funded the federal government; British, French, and Spanish trading policies shaped local economies, and the ongoing commercial war between Great Britain and Napoleon’s France cost neutral American merchants unnecessarily. American merchants were little more than pawns. The North American continent was a showground of imperial competition. The British controlled Canada to the north, Spain controlled lands to the west and south. Both nations provided arms and encouragement to Native Americans, hoping to block American settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains. As for Great Britain and France, “both sought to block the other’s commerce with America: through blockades, port closures, and the imposition of harmful customs duties,” Professor Michael Bottoms explained. “While both nations were equally guilty of abusing their American trading relationships, Americans focused their ire on Britain, partly because of Britain’s [sea-faring] impressment policy. The damage these policies did to the American economy, and to American prestige, led directly to war.” Georgetown resident and Federalist newspaper publisher Alexander Hanson, of Baltimore, described the War of 1812 as “without funds, without an army, navy or adequate fortifications.” Who were the War Hawks and to what extent did Americans support a second war with Great…
By Sarah Becker ©2018 Hemp’s Hectic History “History doesn’t drive economies anymore…,” George Mason University economist Stephen Fuller told the Washingtonian in May. He may be right. The Alexandria Convention and Visitors Bureau’s slogan, Still Making History gave way to the ACVA’s Funside of the Potomac years ago. How does Alexandria describe today’s customer groups, its external publics; then develop a marketing plan? Management guru Peter Drucker defines marketing as the “whole firm taken from the customer’s point of view.” How do you see through the customer’s eyes? It involves “massive surveys.” Marketing is needed “to reach customers and compel them to purchase, use and repurchase your product [or service].” A marketing strategy is the selection of a target market, the choice of a competitive position, and the development of an effective marketing mix to reach and serve the chosen customers. The market pick is preceded by market segmentation. Segmentation variables include age, sex, income, occupation, attitude preference and more. The Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum may be the only Alexandria museum able to develop offerings with broad appeal: to historic and business travelers, women and minorities, the religious and scientifically inclined. I know because I inherited the Apothecary Museum with only 8,000 visitors and six months financial life remaining. Yet within a few years I increased the annual visitor count to 34,500; established the Mortar & Pestle Society; raised general operating and capital improvement funds, and an endowment. Buildings restoration over, the Museum, then owned by the Landmarks Society was ribbon wrapped and given to the city. By comparison…“2016 marks ten years of ownership and operation by the city of Alexandria,” the Office of Historic Alexandria reported on November 29, 2016. “The Apothecary Museum welcomes more than 15,000 visitors annually.” “The city doesn’t offer the attributes the new economy…
by Sarah Becker ©2018 The South Secedes! More Civil War battles were fought in Virginia than in any other state. The majority of the clashes occurred between Washington, D.C. and Richmond, an interesting fact given Virginia’s initial reluctance to secede. “In spite of all excitement, rash conduct, and reckless language indulged in by the ultras at the South, we plainly perceive that the calm attitude and conservative course of Virginia, so far, is exercising its influence in several of the States around South Carolina,” the Alexandria Gazette reported on November 16, 1860. “Enough is known now to satisfy every body that Virginia will not favor ‘precipitate action…that she does not consider the election of Lincoln, as, of itself, ground for an attempt to break up and dissolve the Union….” “What is secession?” The New York Times then asked. “The Southern Disunionist journals are laying great stress on their assumed right to secede.” Said James Madison father of the Constitution in 1832, “It is high time that the [nullifiers] claim to secede at will should be put down by public opinion, and I shall be glad to see the task commenced by one who understands the subject.” After much political pondering—on April 17, 1861—delegates to Virginia’s secession convention voted 88-55 to depart the Union. The vote came only two weeks after the convention roundly rejected an April 4 secession proposal. What changed the delegates and, in turn, the public’s mind? Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln took his Presidential oath of office approximately three weeks after Virginia’s secession convention began. The 1860 Republican platform was clear: “That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is freedom.” Lawyer Lincoln’s 1861 inaugural message was also clear: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of…
By Sarah Becker In college my roommate, an Arkansan and I often discussed southern history. One afternoon—I will never forget—she turned her tiny torso and snapped: “Yankees do not understand! America did not fight a Civil War. It was the War of Northern Aggression.” Aggression was news to me. I am a Hoosier by birth. The War Between the States began in April 1861 with the shelling of Fort Sumter. Alexandrians—initially—were reluctant to separate from the Union. However the mood changed when President Abraham Lincoln assembled 75,000 troops to respond to the rebellion. Virginia seceded as of May 24, 1861 and the War ended with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. “After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the [Confederate] Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources,” Lee told his troops on April 10, 1865. “I need not tell the survivors…that I have consented to this [surrender] from no distrust of them; but, feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that would have attended the continuation of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the terms of this agreement, officers and men can return to their homes…” Reconstruction did not proceed easily. President Andrew Johnson, a southerner and Unionist Democrat, failed to win widespread political support. In 1870 Negro males were granted voting rights. The economic downturn, when combined with the emotion of Robert E. Lee’s 1870 death resulted in a surge of southern sentiment. In April 1885 Edgar Warfield, a pharmacist and former private in the 17th Virginia Infantry, asked the R.E. Lee Camp of the United Confederate Veterans to…
By Bob Tagert In 1749, when Alexandria was founded, only the fish and the seagulls ate and drank here. Where Chadwicks stands today (203 South Strand street), you would be treading water or riding a shallow-draft scow onto the sandy bank that bordered a high bluff behind you. The first person to leave his mark on this southern part of the waterfront was George Gilpin. Gilpin didn’t just build on this property, as had been required by an early law. Slicing into the cliff and using the excavated clay and rock to grade the slope, he created two new city blocks to the east. The town appointed him its engineer to supervise “banking out” all along the Alexandria shoreline. By 1812, the Strand was a recognized The three-story brick warehouse with its wooden roof stood 50 feet from the river. On the evening of Sept. 24, 1810, a candle left burning in a cooper’s shop toppled onto some shavings, igniting a fire that raged for four hours and destroyed every building on the block from Duke to Prince and Union Street to the river. The following fall a new brick warehouse facing the Strand, three stories high with a smaller brick warehouse attached at the rear, both roofed with slate and boasting iron fittings and stone door-and windowsills. The combined dimensions of 34 by 78 feet created the same footprint as for Chadwick’s kitchen and main dining room today. By 1847 tax ledger lists a “wharf and house on the alley and the Strand” with a value of $15,000. It is this structure that, incorporating perhaps some of the 1811 foundation, left parts of its grand stone and lower brick walls to Chadwicks. In 1861 Federal troops crossed the Potomac and occupied Alexandria. The properties were confiscated by the U.S….
This month’s Business Profile is going to be a little bit different than those that we have printed over the last 27 years. I wanted to focus a bit on us, The Old Town Crier. While I am sure I will get a few comments about how “self-serving” this may be, I think it is something that our readers would like to know. Bob Tagert and David Underwood started brain storming about the Crier in June of 1987 while consuming a few adult beverages at the then popular Bullfeathers – now the ever popular O’Connell’s – on King Street. With the merging of the Gazette and the Port Packet at the time, the guys thought that Old Town needed its own publication and the brain storming began. David was a graphic artist and Bob was selling insurance at the time so they had the layout and the ad sales all squared away. They were missing someone with some writing talent and ran across a rugby acquaintance of Bobs, George West, who was a technical writer with Pepco. The triangle was complete. Starting out with no business plan, no investment money and a donated printer they pulled together the first issue in David’s dining room and it was published in January 1988 and every month since. There have been several publications over the years that have tried to emulate what we do that haven’t been able to stay the course. It takes a unique skill set to pull off what we do every month! There are many, many funny stories that go along with the first few years at the Crier – some of them we actually couldn’t print in this space – but we will save them for another time. George was invited to leave early on – one of…
Here is the November 2013 print addition! Stay tuned for updates as we create our new site! 🙂