In 1900 Washington celebrated its centennial as the capital of the nation in fine style. It was an era of great optimism. As a result of the Spanish-American War, the United States had just become a world power, an imperial power. An elaborate book--paid for by Congress--was published to record the celebration, including the full texts of the many long speeches delivered on the occasion. The "sound bite" is in style today, but that was the era of the "sound banquet."
The celebration was on December 12, 1900--a date selected by President William McKinley, who was shortly to be inaugurated in 1901 for his second term and to be assassinated later that year. The date chosen was arbitrary since in 1800 the federal government had moved to Washington in stages. The population of the District by 1900 was 278,718, making it a major American city. For those who believe history repeats itself: On June 6, 1900, Congress had abolished the board of trustees of the public schools and established a seven-member, commission-style board of education made up of residents of the city.
The centennial celebration was truly national. The governors of all the 45 states and the territories participated. While the expenses of the celebration itself were met by contributions from citizens of the District, Congress appropriated money to pay the expenses of the governors who came to Washington in February as members of the planning committee. The total bill for the governors' trip came to $3,613. The Washington Board of Trade hosted a banquet in their honor at the swank Arlington Hotel, which has long since disappeared.
The one-day centennial program began with a White House reception honoring the governors. There was a display of a model and drawings of the proposed enlargement of the mansion, followed by speeches on the mansion's history by an Army colonel, on the development of D.C. by the president of the board of commissioners that ran D.C., on the development of the states by the governor of Iowa, and on the development of the nation by a gentleman from Massachusetts.
At 1:30 a military parade proceeded from the White House to the Capitol, led by the president, his cabinet, the governors, the D.C. commissioners, and other distinguished personalities. At 3:30 speakers from Tennessee, New York, Maryland, and Virginia addressed a joint meeting of the Senate and the House. In the evening a reception at the Corcoran Gallery of Art featured "patriotic airs" by the Marine Band.
In the year 2000 the capital will celebrate its bicentennial. The question in 1997 is whether there will be much for District residents to celebrate. Perhaps by then the limited home rule that they enjoyed for a time will have been restored if the financial control board that is managing the city succeeds in making the District government fiscally responsible, efficient, and performance-oriented.
The mayor performs ceremonial functions and makes appointments. The City Council meets but the control board makes the important decisions. A city administration that is not allowed to decide how resources are to be raised and spent is not performing a fundamental task of government. Control board Chairman Andrew F. Brimmer and his colleagues have taken actions that were mostly justified and necessary, but the District clearly no longer enjoys home rule even in the limited form Congress permitted for the past couple of decades. As D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has pointed out, emasculating the elected school board was an assault on the democratic rights of the citizens of the District, no matter that the school board had failed the children and parents of the city by providing clearly inadequate public schooling.
In early 1997 there were signs that the District had found new friends in high places. Last year the Clinton administration dismissed the idea of giving the city special help, declaring that lots of American cities have problems similar to the capital's, ignoring the fact that Washington is not like other cities in one important respect. Recently the White House has acknowledged that Washington has no state to back it up financially, yet it is required to perform functions normally handled by the states. The Clinton administration plans to have the federal government take over some of these functions, as well as taking some responsibility for the unfunded employee pension liabilities with which the city was saddled when it was given home rule. The downside of this proposal was that it eliminated the federal payment to the District. Since 57% of the city's real estate is exempt from taxation and since the city provides many services to the federal government free of charge, the federal payment is not only justified but, according to a study by the Brookings Institution, it should be much larger.
With the joint aim of turning around the flight of people out of the city and encouraging economic development, Delegate Norton has reintroduced her bill to provide some federal income tax relief for the city's citizens. This bill's prospects are dubious as most legislators resent the proposal as favoritism to the city's residents, ignoring the fact that residents of the four U.S. territories that--like the District--lack voting representation in Congress are exempt from paying the federal income tax. For reasons that are impossible to justify, the District is the only jurisdiction in the country that is forbidden to impose a commuter tax. Such a tax--probably at a rate of two percent of taxable income--would be deductible on both the state and federal income tax returns. It would tax the estimated 437,000 non-residents who work in the city and take home two out of every three dollars earned in the city, providing tremendous windfalls to the suburban jurisdictions in Virginia and Maryland where they live and pay their state and local taxes.
Drastic reform of the city's administration was overdue and remains a prerequisite to additional special financial help from the federal government. There has been inefficiency, incompetence, cronyism, corruption, and criminality, but this situation needs to be put in perspective. Disenfranchised groups of our diverse population have often behaved similarly when they achieved political power in our cities: mobilizing their ethnic constituency, using their numbers, their determination, and their hunger for a sharing of the spoils that only government can provide to advance the status (money and power) of their ethnic group.
My own ethnic group is a case in point. Irish immigrants were discriminated against in their early years in this country (e.g., "No Irish need apply"), and they suffered something similar to--though by no means the equivalent of--the racism that has afflicted African-Americans.
The Irish took their revenge by seeking out the levers of power through the electoral politics of a democratic system. Who can forget the thoroughly corrupt administrations of Mayor James Michael Curley in Boston or of Mayor Frank ("I am the law!") Hague in Jersey City. I do not cite this analogy to defend, excuse, or condone the performance of Marion Barry's administration, but to help explain his continued appeal to his constituency. This Irish analogy suffers from a basic defect: unlike African-Americans, the Irish, not so visibly identifiable, had a fairly easy time assimilating into the larger population.
Washington is my hometown, the only place I have real roots, even though I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. I arrived here in 1939 and have lived here on and off ever since. My father and grandfather, though born in Pennsylvania, were citizens of Washington. I have led a nomadic life, first as a child in a foreign service family and then as a foreign service officer, but I spent most of my formative years in Washington.
It is not surprising that while growing up in Washington I encountered very few African-Americans even though there was a very large black community living side by side with the whites. With near total segregation there was little opportunity to meet an African-American in the usual places where children congregate: in school, on the athletic field, at church, in a social club, in restaurants or at a party. I had no problem encountering black youths on the streets, fearing that they might be criminals or gang members bent on doing me harm. My nemesis in those days was a gang of tough white boys who called themselves the Foggy Bottom Athletic Club and regularly beat up kids they didn't like. I gave them a wide berth.
As was the case with many white people in those days, one African-American I got to know was the maid my mother hired to help with housework and managing three sometimes difficult boys. The only other African-Americans I knew were members of a family of farm workers who helped my maternal grandparents operate their dairy farm in upstate New York, a place we visited in the summer.
Those African-American men provided my first serious exposure to their race, and my impression was positive. They were hardworking, dependable, exceptionally skilled, knowledgeable, and willing to help a kid learn the ropes.
In those pre-World War II years there was a strong African-American community in Washington. It was not a majority of the population. Black life and culture centered around the community's churches, which like practically all other D.C. institutions were thoroughly segregated. These black churches are still very strong and, though not segregated by law, are mostly separate by custom, tradition, and preference.
Another pillar of the local African-American educational community in the mid-century was Howard University, which since shortly after the end of the Civil War had been drawing college students from all over the country. Today, it attracts students from all over the world.
The greatest benefit to Washington's black community was the ending of discrimination in hiring by the federal government during President Franklin Roosevelt's administration, when the president established a Fair Employment Practices Commission. His motivation may have had something to do with civil rights, but it was basically a wartime measure to mobilize all of the civilian work force to replace many men and women serving in the armed forces.
African-Americans could obtain federal employment, but initially only in the lowest three grades, GS-1, 2, and 3, in mostly clerical positions. But that was a big improvement over what had been obtainable earlier. The watchword in the African-American community was "1440," which was the annual salary they could obtain in a federal job. It doesn't sound like much, but that was more than a schoolteacher then earned. This diminution of employment discrimination by the biggest employer in the area created an economic boon for the black community which cannot be overestimated. It helped fuel the migration of southern African Americans to northern cities. They eventually became the majority of the D.C. population.
From the Civil War through World War II the capital's population swelled because wars are directed by the federal government. By 1945 the population exceeded 900,000. Since then Washington has been steadily losing population, which has fallen to 549,000 this year.
The two principal reasons both blacks and whites have fled to the suburbs are the deterioration of the public school system and the violent crime. Both trends have affected the African-American population far more than the whites. First, the crime rate is much higher in black neighborhoods. Second, only four percent of the students in D.C.'s public schools are white. Those whites with school-age children increasingly rely on private schools.
It was not always so. I am a product of the D.C. public school system, of Bancroft and Stoddert elementary schools, Gordon Junior High School and Western High School, the latter three in or near Georgetown. Since Georgetown now has so few school-age children, Gordon became the Carlos Emanuel Rosario Adult Education Center until recently when it was made into an elementary and middle school for students from the decrepit and abandoned Fillmore Arts Center and the Hardy Middle School. Western has become the Duke Ellington School of the Arts for arts majors from all over the city.
Washington had the reputation of being a "Southern town," which is not surprising given that it was made up of pieces taken from Virginia and Maryland, both states below the Mason-Dixon Line, both of them "slave states," and both imbued with a plantation culture. In keeping with those traditions, public schooling was totally segregated. There was a white system and a parallel and separate (but hardly equal) system for children of African descent. These two systems did not mix in any respect.
At least two of the white high schools, Wilson and Western, had very high academic standards. Many of their graduates went on to college. Western drew much of its student body from Northern Virginia which had no academically outstanding high schools. The city's best white high schools were the equal of, if not superior to, those like Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Montgomery Blair in Montgomery County. And there was at least one excellent black high school, Dunbar, that prepared its graduates for college and for middle-class status. It enjoyed a sterling reputation that attracted African-American students from distant parts of the country. There were other very good black high schools: Cardozo for business, Armstrong for trade, and Phelps for vocational skills. In effect, the District had two quite good public school systems. It now has one very bad one.
The second principal cause of the flight of people of all races from the city has been crime. The rate is high not because of the high proportion of black residents but because of the high proportion of poor residents and because the war on drugs has been an embarrassing joke. If you combine poverty with bad schools, lack of opportunity for employment in legal jobs, racial discrimination, and a high demand for drugs that are profitable to sell because they are illegal, the result is a high crime rate. And because of the drug trade's profitability, there is inevitably violence among those contending for dominance in the trade. All of this is regardless of race.
Of course, the growing drug-related crime wave is not just a D.C. problem and it cannot be solved just locally. It is estimated conservatively that the sale of illegal drugs is a $50 billion dollar business in the United States alone. Two potential solutions have been widely debated.
The moderate program: take federal resources away from the expensive and failed "war on drugs" that seeks to destroy the sources of drugs, to stop the movement of drugs, and to imprison dealers and users and shift these resources to a massive education program about the dark and dangerous effects of drug abuse and to the expansion of effective detox and abstinence programs.
The radical solution: decriminalize the currently illegal drugs and establish a federally regulated program to help certified addicts overcome their addiction.
Either is preferable to overfilling ever larger prisons with people trying to survive in a difficult economic environment. Whatever the solution, the city can no longer tolerate a crime rate which causes so many killings and so much pain and sorrow for its citizens.
The latest statistics show blacks still moving to the suburbs in large numbers, but D.C.'s white population has slightly increased. Perhaps ever-longer commuting times are enticing white workers back to the city, especially if their children have grown up and left home. The Hispanic population is the fastest-growing ethnic group.
The U.S. Census Bureau projects that the District will continue to lose population through the end of the century but that the trend will reverse as immigration and births exceed deaths. By 2000 the population is projected to drop to 523,000, but by 2025 to exceed 650,000.
The effect on the tax base of the out-migration has been devastating, because most of those who move out are taxpayers while many of those who remain behind or move into the city are poor who need help. Most of the white population is the very rich, older, empty-nest or childless couples, middle-class workers, retirees, and younger singles. Among blacks there is a disproportionate number of the poor, singles, and families headed by single mothers.
In the mid-1960s, long after school desegregation in the District, I was a State Department desk officer for several African countries. One of our responsibilities was to provide the ambassadors and officers of new African embassies with a list of restaurants where they could expect to be served while traveling between Washington and New York by car. The International Club of Washington was founded by U.S. officials so they could entertain foreign diplomats of color without embarrassment.
Have we come a long way from those days? Yes, in some areas. There is mixing in public places, in the schools and the workplace, and at football games where whites and blacks join in cheering their thoroughly integrated Redskins. But Washington is still a city of nearly all-white neighborhoods and nearly all-black neighborhoods. For the most part the two communities lead separate lives socially. We are a house divided in the most fundamental sense.
Though many of the white citizens care deeply for their home town, many others are apathetic, alienated, and uninterested, believing they wield no power politically. Stand back and criticize, stay aloof and grumble, vote because it's your civic duty, but complain that your vote really counts for nothing. Many of these same people are indifferent to the condition of the public school system, which few of them use, and show little concern for the drug problems because they are rarely directly affected by their consequences. Yet these two disasters have been causing the city in which they live to rot from within.
The attitude is even worse among the 3.5 million people of the Washington metropolitan area who do not live in D.C. They criticize it loudly while making little contribution to its welfare. They naturally care more about the schools and the crime rate where they live than where they work.
But Washington is every American's capital city. Each of us should care about its condition. I'm often too negative about the District myself. Even with a model city government, Washington would have problems surviving. It is hounded by conditions that confront no other U.S. city; it is landlord to a world capital without the support of a state government, it lacks the tax benefits of the other U.S. territories which lack voting privileges in Congress, it has its hands tied by federal regulations, and is scrutinized by a Congress where representatives from neighboring states see to it that there is no commuter tax.
Not long ago, I was deploring some new evidence of mismanagement or corruption when a fellow member of the Cosmos Club took me to task for being so negative--pointing out that despite its problems, we live in one of the most beautiful and enthralling cities in the world.
When one looks down on the city from an airplane, it looks like a forest--there are so many trees. We have a great subway. There are great museums and galleries, almost all free. Washington has a rich cultural life and a rich heritage--both black and white. There are great restaurants with an ethnic spread that is quite amazing. Most of the housing is wonderful, usually single-family dwellings, unlike those of cities of comparable size here and abroad. More often we should all look on the bright side. As for me, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.Robert V. Keeley ('85), during his career as a foreign service officer, was Ambassador to Mauritius, Zimbabwe, and Greece. From 1990-1995 he was president of the Middle East Institute in Washington. He currently writes and publishes through his own publishing venture, The Five and Ten Press.
ROBERT
V. KEELEY ('85), during his career as a foreign service oficer, was Ambassador
to Mauritius, Zimbabwe, and Greece. From 1990-1995 he was president of the Middle
East Institute in Washington. He currently writes and publishes through his
own publishing venture, The Five and Ten Press.
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