Barry Farm Dwellings: Public Housing and Civil Rights in Washington, D.C.

Barry Farm Dwellings was a 442-unit public housing project built in 1943 by the National Capital Housing Authority, east of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. It was meant mainly for African American residents, and at the time it was the city's largest subsidised housing complex for African Americans.

• Homes. Town houses of two to four bedrooms, some later combined into six-bedroom units, and a recreation centre.
• Who came first. Priority went to people displaced by war-related projects, working in war-related jobs, or employed by the U.S. military.

Bolling v. Sharpe

In the 1950s and '60s the community became a centre of civil rights activism.

In 1950, residents asked that their teenage children be allowed to attend John Phillip Sousa Junior High, a newly built school for white students in southeast D.C., and that it be integrated. At the time there was only one junior high school for African American students east of the river — Kelly Miller Junior High School, built in 1949, more than 20 minutes north of Barry Farm.

The students were refused admission. Organising by Barry Farm residents led to a complaint, Bolling v. Sharpe, one of several companion cases to Brown v. Board of Education. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated public education was unconstitutional. Because Bolling concerned schools in a federal district, the Court issued a separate opinion in it, finding for the plaintiffs.

Tenants and welfare rights

In 1965, Barry Farm residents Etta Horn and Lillian Wright organised a tenants' council, with support from President Johnson's War on Poverty programme. Its first victory was a $1.5 million renovation of the property.

• The group became the core of the Citywide Welfare Alliance.
• Horn helped found the National Welfare Rights Organization, which fought for the rights of welfare recipients across the country; organising meetings were held at her house.
• She also advised Martin Luther King Jr. as he planned the Poor People's Campaign in 1968.

African American Civil Rights Network

Barry Farm Dwellings is part of the African American Civil Rights Network, created by the African American Civil Rights Act of 2017 and coordinated by the National Park Service: a collection of properties, facilities and programmes that together tell the story of the people, places and events of the African American civil rights movement.

Sources

• National Park Service, African American Civil Rights Network, "Barry Farm Dwellings, Washington, D.C." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/barry-farm-dwellings-washington-dc.htm
• Corrected: the source spells the name "Berry Farm" once. Its statement that, as a result of the 1954 ruling, schools across the United States and in the District "were desegregated" is left out: the ruling declared school segregation unconstitutional; it did not itself desegregate the schools.
• The 1940s photograph, credited to the National Capital Housing Authority (now the D.C. Housing Authority), is not reproduced.
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.