Tag: chocolate city

kimreesesdaughter:

kimreesesdaughter:

I’m 500 miles away from home and so fucking proud! D.C. will always be ours!

A little more background on how they successfully gentrified Chocolate City: I was probably in 11th grade when I started noticing the area around my church (which was 6 blocks of Black owned shops and brownstones) started being flooded with White People walking their dogs. Remind you, White People knew better than to come in certain parts of DC and Maryland but here they were with ice cream parlors and dog parks.

By 2012, my Black Owned childhood block had absolutely no Black People in it. They knocked on doors (actually knocked, face-to-face) and wrote checks from anywhere between $350K-$750K for the brownstones in my church’s neighborhood on the spot. Same year sold those homes for 3.5 million and up.

A lot of people refused the money and were still forced out with the property taxes being damn near quadrupled. Couldn’t afford it and had to cop out. There were also some illegal measures taken as well. The same thing is happening in Fort Washington, MD RIGHT NOW.

All Black DC residents were forced into my hometown of PG County. I can’t give an actual legitimate number but from my trips home, it seems like less than 20% of DC is Black.

S/O to Southeast DC still holding on!