Brinnie and Angie Whitehurst interview part 2, 2019-12-17
Scope and Contents
Mapping Segregation in Washington DC: School and Neighborhood Desegregation in Ward 4 documents the transformation of Ward 4 neighborhoods and schools during the 1950s and early 1960s. Ward 4 was predominantly white in the early 1940s, but saw a shift in demographics as white families fled after the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bolling v. Sharpe, in which public school segregation was deemed unconstitutional in the District of Columbia. This project primarily consists of interviews with longtime or former Ward 4 residents.
Dates
- Creation: 2019-12-17
Creator
- Whitehurst, Brinnie Harris (Person)
- Whitehurst, Angelyn Lucille (Person)
- Shoenfeld, Sarah Jane (Person)
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
The external hard drive DIG_BACKUP is for staff use only and contains preservation copies of this collection. This external hard drive is not publically accessible. Please see the digital collection in Dig DC for access to this collection.
Biographical / Historical
Brinnie Whitehurst was born in Edmond, West Virginia in 1928 and moved to Washington, D.C. in the 1940s where she attended Armstrong High School. After attending Bluefield State College in West Virginia, she moved back to D.C. where she married and raised four children. In 1959, the family moved to 128 Peabody Street NW, next to Fort Slocum Park. Four years later their house was among 19 taken by eminent domain to build Rabaut Junior High School. The family moved to 1309 Hamilton Street NW. Brinnie’s daughter Angelyn (Angie) Whitehurst was in second grade at this time. She attended Bancroft and Whittier elementary schools, MacFarland Junior High School, and Woodrow Wilson High School.
Extent
From the Collection: 6.25 Gigabytes
From the Collection: 50 Files
Abstract
In Part 2 of this interview, Angie talks about the experience of being one of the few Black students at historically white Wilson High School in the late 1960s. She also recounts finding cannonballs and steer bones in the woods behind the house on Peabody Street. Brinnie discusses the difficulty of finding a new house and the possibility of having to send some of her children away to live with their grandparents.
Geographic
Topical
Repository Details
Part of the The People's Archive, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library Repository