New exhibit shows how redlining affected DC and beyond, and what we can do about it today

Spend some time in the parts of the District west of Rock Creek Park, and you will find cute neighborhoods, vibrant commercial areas, great schools, and lots of green space. You will also probably notice another quality of the place: Its residents are overwhelmingly white. It’s been this way for a very long time.

Turn back the clock to the start of the twentieth century, when those cute neighborhoods were but a twinkle in developers’ eyes, and you will find that establishing and maintaining a white utopia was exactly what was intended by their founders. Policies such as minimum construction costs evolved into racially restrictive covenants, exclusionary zoning, racist citizens’ associations, segregated schools, blockbusting, and government-supported redlining.

Sadly, these efforts were incredibly successful. As the number of Black residents in the District soared mid-century, the very white neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park became even whiter, and small communities of color were forced out to make room for new white institutions. As a result, the opportunity to create generational wealth through homeownership benefitted only white families; the aforementioned policies ensured that Black families could not do the same.

Starting Thursday, April 11, 2024, and continuing for three months, the lobby of the Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library is home to a new interactive traveling exhibit, Undesign the Redline, which explains the history of redlining and other race-based policies of exclusion in the United States, especially the displacement of people and communities of color from their neighborhoods in the first half of the twentieth century. It explores the policies that fueled structural racism and inequality, the systems that resulted, and how we can come together in an intentional way to “undesign” those systems and their impacts. It looks at events nationally, and locally in the District, specifically in upper Northwest neighborhoods.

Undesign the Redline provides important context, and a platform, for a collective exploration of ways we in Ward 3 can address racial inequities, particularly as manifested by a lack of housing that is broadly affordable. Throughout the three-month exhibit, the Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library will host a series of programs designed to encourage thoughtful discussion about the area’s past and the reparative steps we might take in the future. The programs will include talks, panels, walking tours, and film screenings on the following topics:

• The removal of Black communities in Reno City, Broad Branch Road, and River Road
• The history of Barry Farm
• The untold history of the Cleveland Park neighborhood
• The evolution of fair housing
• Modern-day redlining and exclusionary practices
• The Black experience of racialized surveillance and gentrification
• Faith-based efforts to unwind the area’s discriminatory past

Additionally, Undesign the Redline will provide a forum for high school students to discuss the exhibit and its implications, and allow the public to engage in an ongoing discussion about how to move forward with policy changes in the District and in upper Northwest, supported by lessons learned from neighboring jurisdictions’ efforts to build more inclusive communities.

How the past is present

Understanding the history of where we live and how past injustices impact people today is a necessary first step to positive change. Later this month, for example, the Zoning Commission will consider a plan to rezone Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase, providing an opportunity for more housing and affordable housing in a place where little currently exists, which has received extreme pushback. Likewise the recent effort to designate a historic district in Chevy Chase, if successful, would hamper efforts to make the area more welcoming for new residents. Historic Chevy Chase DC, a preservation organization that has done tremendous work in rediscovering the neighborhood’s sordid history, announced this month that it cannot support the proposed historic district because the interests of making Chevy Chase more welcoming to new residents, who may be less affluent and more diverse, outweigh the need to preserve its physical form.

Arguments like these, which acknowledge the exclusionary origins of Chevy Chase, are necessary to change its status quo: The DC Historic Preservation Office announced it would not recommend the nomination to the Historic Preservation Review Board for consideration. Instead, it will commission an equity analysis of DC’s historic resources and use the findings in the consideration of future historic district proposals.

Details on the Undesign the Redline project

The exhibit will be at the Cleveland Park Neighborhood Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue, NW, from April 11–July 11, 2024. Anyone can sign up to receive updates about upcoming programs. The exhibit is open during regular library hours and is suitable for middle school-aged children and older. Guided tours are available Wednesdays at 10:30 am, Saturdays at 2:00 pm, and Sundays at 1:30 pm. Private tours may be arranged by contacting wfjensen@gmail.com.

This is the first time that this entirely secular exhibit has been initiated by faith communities. In 2023, St. Columba’s Episcopal Church invited other Ward 3 houses of worship to help plan and launch the exhibit as a catalyst for education, conversation, and action to undo the injustices of racial segregation in our neighborhood and beyond. Founding sponsors include Adas Israel Congregation, Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church, St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Temple Micah, and Temple Sinai.

A team from the faith communities formed the Community Advisory Group (CAG) to oversee the local curation and programming of the exhibit. CAG members include people with ties to communities barred or displaced from Ward 3 and groups and institutions wrestling with the lasting impacts of these actions.

Designing the WE is a design studio that has worked with local residents in cities across the country to bring Undesign the Redline to their cities and neighborhoods, since 2015. Co-founder Braden Crooks and his team help guide the project, conduct research to find and present stories of housing discrimination in each city, contribute programming ideas, and create and install the exhibit in each location. To learn more, visit undesigndc.org.