Abstract

Ms. Curry describes growing up in Shaw and Eastgate, the influence of music in her early life, coming into her own gender and sexuality in her teens, joy and pain on the streets and in the clubs, traumatic experiences in Lorton prison, organizing against discrimination against transgender women, her continued advocacy, and the importance of helping and loving each other.

Scope and Contents This project interviewed current and former residents to record details about their lives and viewpoints living in a place that, although highly stigmatized and marginalized, has been their home and that of their kin and other members of vital social networks for decades. In documenting the added tension of a community undergoing the dramatic and inexorable shifts of urban redevelopment, changes the community did not request or desire, this project endeavors to capture a disappearing way of...