Barry Farm Film Screening + Book Signing
Date and Time
Oct 21, 2022 6:00 pm
Location
Anacostia
2004 Martin Luther King Jr Ave SE, Washington, District of Columbia, 20020
Oct 21, 2022 6:00 pm
Anacostia
Take a left off of the Anacostia Freeway on to Firth Sterling Ave – what do you see? Empty fields. Shiny new buildings just breaking ground. Construction equipment. Sweeping views of the capital. To a random passerby, it doesn’t look like much aside from a work in progress. But for folks who call Barry Farm-Hillsdale home, it’s much deeper than that. And for developers, as one community member states in this film, all they see is a gold mine.
These empty fields hold powerful memories. Enslaved people once worked this land under white landowners- when Reconstruction came, the Freedman’s Bureau bought the land on what was, back then, the outskirts of the nation’s capital. The formerly enslaved purchased lots, and built homes, schools, churches- they built one of DC’s first thriving Black communities.
Here, youth from the community courageously desegregated the Anacostia Pool in the 1940’s. Here, the city constructed a sprawling public housing complex called Barry Farm Dwellings post World War II to house war workers- beloved by insiders, if notorious to outsiders. Here, the movement for Welfare Rights took shape. Here, the Junkyard Band honed its chops on homemade instruments before putting a turbocharge into the city’s Go-Go music. Here, residents lived in the Barry Farms Dwellings up until 2019, when the final community members were removed for the redevelopment. In 2020, the site was designated a historic landmark after local activists and community groups came together to save the last five remaining buildings of Barry Farm Dwellings.
The DC Legacy Project: Barry Farm-Hillsdale is dedicated to uplifting the Black-led struggle for land and housing in DC at an important site of this sacred struggle—the five remaining buildings of Barry Farm Dwellings.
The documentary “Barry Farm: Community, Land & Justice in Washington, DC” is a great visual and oral history of Barry Farm and its legacy here in Washington, DC. Tonight’s featured book, BARRY FARM-HILLSDALE IN ANACOSTIA, continues this work shedding light on this historically Black community. Together, you’ll get numerous perspectives and an intimate understanding of Barry Farm-Hillsdale and it’s place in Chocolate City. Busboys and Poets is proud to host curator and historian Alcione M. Amos, Dr. Michael R. Fisher, and Organizing Director for EMPOWER DC Daniel del Pielago for this double header event. Copies of the book will be available for purchase before, during, and after the event.
This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm with a film screening, followed by a book talk/discussion with local author Alcione M. Amos, and film steering committee member Michael R. Fisher Jr and Organizing Director for EMPOWER DC Daniel del Pielago . After the panel there will be an audience Q&A. Copies of BARRY FARM-HILLSDALE IN ANACOSTIA will be available for purchase before and during the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books.
Alcione M. Amos is an Independent Scholar originally from Brazil who has lived and worked in the United States for five decades. She worked as a Researcher and Librarian at the World Bank, Washington, D.C., for more than 20 years while at the same time maintaining a career as an Independent Scholar. She then worked as a Museum Curator at the Smithsonian Institution Anacostia Community Museum between 2009 and 2022, when she retired. Her fields of interest include post-enslavement societies such as those of the Black Seminoles and African-Americans in Washington, D.C. after the Civil War, and Afro-Brazilians who moved to West Africa in the 19 th century. Ms. Amos has published in Africa, Brazil, the United States, and Europe and has curated three exhibits for the Smithsonian Institution. Her third exhibit, We Shall Not be Moved: Stories of Struggle from Barry Farm-Hillsdale (2022), is based on her book published in 2021, Barry Farm-Hillsdale in Anacostia: A Historic African American Community. She holds a Master’s Degree from the Catholic University, Washington, D.C.
Dr. Michael R. Fisher is Assistant Professor of African American Studies in the College of Social Sciences and a Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Metropolitan Studies and in the Department of Humanities at San José State University. He is also an Affiliate Scholar at the Metropolitan Policy Center at American University and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of South Africa. Before his career as an educator, Dr. Fisher was a public policy advocate on Capitol Hill. His policy portfolio included financial reform and federal social welfare programs addressing poverty. He later transitioned to local politics and public policy when he became the inaugural Director of Advocacy at a nonprofit organization. There he was responsible for the development of the organization’s policy agenda and advocacy strategy for affordable housing creation and the elimination of chronic homelessness in the nation’s capital, working with other activists, agencies, D.C. residents, and elected officials in the process. Currently, he serves as a founding steering committee member of the DC Legacy Project: Barry Farm-Hillsdale, a group dedicated to uplifting the Black-led struggle for land and housing in D.C.
Daniel del Pielago was born in Peru and immigrated to the DC metro area in 1980. For the past 15 years he has been organizing with communities of color here in the District around the issues of preserving and improving affordable housing and traditional public education. Daniel is the Organizing Director for Empower DC, an organization that advances racial, economic, and environmental justice by investing in the leadership and organized political power of DC’s lowest income residents and communities. In this role with Empower DC, Daniel hopes to support staff organizers in pushing their campaigns and the organization forward as a whole. Daniel, is also a husband, father of two and lover of music of all types, he has collected music in the vinyl format for over 20 years.
