Amen To That, Brother!

That really was an amazing note. Thanks for sharing that news.

There’s the old lore about who was involved in ending the riots. James Brown organized a concert the day after King’s assassination at the Boston Garden and worked with network TV to have it broadcast live. During the performance, he personally spoke out against the rioting and appealed for calm. He was simultaneously maligned by the Panthers, and invited to dinner by LBJ for that concert. But he wasn’t ready to be boxed in by either. By the summer, he was all over the airwaves again with one of the most popular radio hits — “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.”

But not to digress too far; it’s a great story, and a great sign. It was my experience too, living a block from U and 14th in 1993-94, that it was a fairly sketchy area, still prone to gunfire — probably made the more sketchy because I lived there. But it roared back, fueled by a niche of business that’s best poised to thrive along the poverty divide — trendy dive bars. They’re the only businesses in no need of daytime business traffic, drawing throngs of passers-by at night, and able to afford taking a low-overhead, high-margin financial risk of setting up shop in the neighborhoods. It’s not at all unlike like Adams Morgan a generation earlier. Today U Street is absorbing almost as much nightlife as Adams Morgan — and, by this report, throws block parties on the same scale as well!