It's an Obama Street Party on Black Broadway

In the early 20th century, the first great urban community and one of the legendary centers of the African-American cultural and intellectual achievement was Washington DC's U Street Corridor.  Once the home of Duke Ellington, U Street—just a few blocks from Howard University--was through the 1950's a destination for jazz clubs, and the Lincoln Theater was to DC what the Apollo was to Harlem.  U Street was sometimes called "Black Broadway."

The riots after Martin Luther King's assassination hit the U Street corridor hard.  The drug epidemic of the 70's through the 90's devastated the neighborhood.  But in recent years, the neighborhood has been reborn.  Starting in the 1990's with the opening of a Metro stop on U St, several new nightspots joined the few remaining traditional venues like the Lincoln Theater and the newer hipster spots like the 9:30 Club.  Tying together past and present, jazz clubs have been a key to U Street's renaissance; the area has several excellent venues to catch good live jazz, including HR-57, a club run by a foundation named after an act of Congress sponsored in 1987 by John Conyers that declared "the sense of the Congress that jazz is hereby designated as a rare and valuable national American treasure to which we should devote our attention, support and resources to make certain it is preserved, understood and promulgated. "

The neighborhood around U Street has become much more fashionable in recent years; it's one of the hipper parts of town, and some new condos are very pricy.  If you dropped a bomb that wiped out everyone in a 1 ½ mile radius of the corner of U and 14th there probably wouldn't be any DC-based bloggers left alive.  But the gentrification of the area hasn't been embraced by everyone.  Some longtime residents have been displaced, and has led many of the African American residents to move to other parts of DC or nearby Prince George's County, MD.  And as these residents have moved out, their institutions and churches have followed.  

Nonetheless, U St remains a destination for many DC area residents, tourists, and especially people who want to see one of the key neighborhoods in the development of an urban African American economic and cultural elite.  

I just got home after an day of traipsing around the District.  I went to an event down at the Library of Congress, and the lines for people getting inaugural tickets from their member of Congress wound out the door of each of the Congressional office buildings.  Despite looking likely to be in line for quite some time, most people had smiles and appeared to be making acquaintance and conversation with the people around them.  Even though there's little happening on the Mall, Capitol Hill was thronged with people.  Though DC is a fairly heavily African-American city, even in mostly white far northwest DC one typically sees a fair number of African-Americans.  But it's unmistakable—looking at the crowds around DC, you know this is probably the greatest number of African-Americans ever to come in to this city.

This afternoon, I went up to U Street for a event some friends put on for their kids.  We were upstairs in a café across from Ben's Chili Bowl, U Street's most loved institution.  (I'd link to Ben's website, but their server appears to have crashed from all the attention.)  You may remember reading about Ben's, as Barack Obama stopped there for lunch last weekend.  Ben's opened in 1958, while U Street might still have had a claim on the name "Black Broadway."  Whenever he visited (still segregated) DC, Martin Luther King ate at Ben's.  It survived all the tumult and change of U Street, and in August Ben and Virginia Ali and their family celebrated the 50th anniversary of their diner.  For years Ben's has had a sign that declared longtime patron Bill Cosby as the only person who eats at Ben's for free.  Last week the sign was changed to include "and the Obama family."

The line to get in to Ben's a few hours ago wrapped down the block, past several strorefronts, and all the way down the alley almost to V Street.  People waiting in line in the cold were having a good time.  Like on Capitol Hill, people were smiling and chatting with those around them.  And inside, Ben's was rockin'.  

While upstairs at my friends' party, there was a tremendous roar from downstairs.  Did someone famous show up at Ben's?  People rushed to the windows to look across the street.  No, it was just about a hundred people, a mix of people, making lots of noise and having a great time.  When we left, there were about 40 people in the middle of the restaurant dancing to Marvin Gaye's Let's Get it On.  Down the street, you could barely walk, but for all the tourists filling the sidewalks, and the vendors aside the sidewalks selling just about anything you could imagine they could tout as an Obama souvenir.  A previously vacant basement storefront is operating as an Obama store.  And everywhere you look, again, the crowds are overwhelmingly African American.

U Street may no longer be Black Broadway.  In a time where there's no longer a need for a "separate but equal" Broadway, it's becoming something else.  It's the most racially mixed neighborhood in DC.  It's a place where the nightlife is diverse and exciting, the dining superb, and the crowds vibrant.  There are links to the greatness of its segregated past and its promising future.  It's filled with people of every race, but especially African-Americans.  It's exploding with crowds and fun.  And today it's the best party in America.