Recently, I resolved to get out for some needed exercise by picking one of DC's neighborhoods for a walking tour every week. Let's start with 14th Street and it's contrast between now and then. I did this walk on Tuesday.
But first some history:
14th Street April 1968
On April 4,1968, civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. His murder sparked unrest that night in Washington, DC. That was Thursday. Over the next few days, violence, looting and arson enveloped the main commercial centers in the African-American neighborhoods. The 14th Street commercial corridor was hit hardest. Most of the smoke you see in the photo on the left is coming from 14th Street.
Washington has always been two cities -- one black, one white. This separation has begun to dissipate somewhat and today's 14th Street is a prime example of that. But that wasn't the case in 1968, when 14th Street was the black community's main street. It suffered the most damage during the 1968 rioting.
Here's a good example of DC's two cities: On Friday, the day after MLK's assassination, my wife and I decided to go ahead with the annual Georgetown house tour we'd signed up for, mainly because it included the Averell Harriman house with its collection of famous impressionist paintings. We saved that for our last house on the tour.
As we headed down N Street toward the Harriman house, tour officials came by to say the tour was shutting down. Everyone was urged to go home as soon as possible because more rioting was underway and President Johnson had called out the National Guard. The federal and district government offices -- and most businesses -- had shut down. Massive traffic gridlock followed as panicked commuters raced home to the suburbs.
By the end of Friday night, 13,600 federal troops occupied the city.