District officials, business magnates, artists, organizers and residents recently ushered in the renaming of Southeast’s Good Hope Road with a ceremony honoring the life and legacy of former D.C. Mayor and Ward 8 D.C. Council member Marion S. Barry Jr., the man whose name will now emanate from street signs along the nearly two-mile corridor.
“Marion Barry did a lot of good for people in the community,” said Ann Fields, co-owner of LaThreadz Couture, a variety store along the corridor. “He gave a lot of people their first job. He put a lot of work into Ward 8. Renaming the street? He earned it.”
In the years since Barry’s death, the former Good Hope Road experienced incremental but significant economic and infrastructural development, somewhat similar to District neighborhoods west of the Anacostia River.
For instance, new Black-owned eateries and businesses are peppered throughout the corridor. D.C. government employees also make their daily commute to the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development, located on Marion Barry Avenue SE near Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE.
In recent years, the D.C. Department of Transportation has been in the throes of a project to ease traffic in the area.
Even so, pockets of Marion Barry Avenue still highlight quality-of-life issues affecting Ward 8, the jurisdiction with the highest concentration of Black people and District youth. While D.C. government officials continue to mull a multiagency response to violent crime and substance use, a methadone clinic continues to operate against community members’ wishes.
The Marion Barry Avenue area also carries a reputation that some people, like Gbenga Ogunjimi, are working hard to dispel.
Ogunjimi, a Nigerian immigrant and social entrepreneur, operates the Nigerian Center out of the Anacostia Arts Center on Marion Barry Avenue. He helps clients not too far from Mahogany Books, the only Black-owned bookstore located east of the Anacostia River, which is also based in the Anacostia Arts Center.
In 2015, just months after Barry’s death, Ogunjimi leased a space at the center and moved into nearby Marbury Plaza. By that time, he had been living in the D.C. area for four years, passionate about paving a way for others just as Barry did for Black business owners.
That’s why, when he’s not helping his fellow Nigerians and other newly arrived African immigrants fill out immigration paperwork, Ogunjimi frequents E-life Restaurant, also located in the Anacostia Arts Center, and Turning Natural, which is just a five-minute walk along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
Ogunjimi also addresses misconceptions about Marion Barry Avenue among Nigerians who visit the Anacostia Arts Center from the D.C. suburbs. He said Melvin Foote, president of Constituency for Africa, a U.S.-Africa public policy organization, recently recognized his efforts to boost the ethnic diversity of Marion Barry Avenue.
With the new name bestowed upon the corridor, Ogunjimi anticipates more will be done to attract new life into Marion Barry Avenue. He told The Informer however that it’s a matter of will on the part of the D.C. government and local entrepreneurs.
“The name change helps to inspire the next generation to honor those who paved the way for us,” said Ogunjimi, executive director of the Nigerian Center. “Our critical services require people to come here. That translates to other services that people have to frequent. You have to put those services east of the Anacostia River to dispel those narratives.”
New Street Name, Ancient Avenue
During the latter part of April, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) signed into law the Marion Barry Avenue Designation Act of 2023, which officially changed the name of Good Hope Road SE to Marion Barry Avenue SE.
While Marion Barry Avenue is new, the road itself stretches back centuries, according to D.C. historian John Muller. Indigenous peoples, including the Nacotchtank, or Anacostan, tribe, used it as a trade route long before Europeans arrived from across the Atlantic in the early 1600s.
“These roadways were not planned by the English — they were already in existence,” Muller said. “It’s a really ancient thoroughfare.”
It’s difficult to trace exactly when the name Good Hope Road first took root, Muller said. But an 1863 newspaper article he dug up mentions a “Good Hope Tavern, on the hill east of Anacostia bridge.”
Thus, it’s possible that the name Good Hope Road was in use in 1865 — when John Wilkes Booth fled down that road after assassinating President Abraham Lincoln. His escape took him from Ford’s Theatre, past the Navy Yard and through Anacostia on his way to an ally’s home in Prince George’s County, Maryland, according to an Anacostia Heritage Trail historical marker.
Fortunately, there’s a far better historical figure whose footsteps traced Good Hope Road: the “Lion of Anacostia” himself. Frederick Douglass would have walked the corridor often when he lived in D.C. in the late 1800s. Muller, who wrote a book about Douglass’ life in D.C. and leads walking tours around Anacostia on the same subject, said Douglass frequented many businesses along the lower part of the road, then called Harrison Street.
To prove it, the historian brings receipts — literally.
“Receipts in the Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress confirm Douglass bought groceries, supplies for his horses and stables, home goods, stationary and office supplies and other household items sold by merchants along Good Hope Road SE,” Muller wrote in an email.
One document shows that Douglass subscribed to “The Anacostia Press,” a newspaper headquartered on Harrison Street. Another details his purchases from a grocer at the corner of Monroe and Harrison Streets — today’s Southeast’s Marion Barry and Martin Luther King Jr. avenues.
During the eight years he spent working at City Hall, Douglass may have strode along Good Hope Road nearly every workday on the way from his Old Anacostia home to his office on Indiana Avenue NW, Muller said.
“[Douglass] was known to walk around town… in his personal letters he observes that he thinks better when he’s walking,” Muller said in an interview. “He got his steps in, as it were.”
Memorializing Barry’s Footprints in D.C. History
On Nov. 18, the day of Marion Barry Avenue’s official renaming, hundreds of revelers converged on Marion Barry Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. Experience Unlimited kept a large crowd grooving to go-go as a montage of Barry photos graced a megatron screen behind the band.
Speakers included Bowser, D.C. Council member Trayon White (D-Ward 8), and former D.C. first lady Cora Masters Barry.
Barry told The Informer that her late husband’s name will truly live on with the street renaming.
“There is an African proverb I think that says, ‘when you call a person’s name, that person won’t die’,” said Barry, 77. “There are buildings, a statue and soon to be a mural in honor of Marion, and all of those things are great. But by renaming a street people will say his name a thousand times a day. This is very exciting, and important.”
The street renaming does entail some practical work, in addition to symbolic shifts: updating addresses for buildings along the road. As of the evening of Nov. 20 — two days after the official ceremony — both Waze and Apple Maps appeared to have added the new street name to their databases, while Google Maps had not.
Businesses on the new Marion Barry generally said they don’t expect much disruption.
“The only thing that changes [is] the new address,” said Norma Hidalgo, the 29-year-old manager of a T-Mobile store. “We have to print out new flyers and tell some of our customers, and that is a little bit of a hassle, but that’s okay.”
Fields said she sent out information to her customers about the street renaming a month ago so the new address should not be a surprise. Tony Anderson, the manager of carryout eatery Tony’s Place, said the process hasn’t posed many difficulties.
“I have lived in Ward 8 most of my life and I see the changing of Good Hope Road to Marion Barry Avenue as beneficial,” Anderson, 39, said. “We have had to update some things, such as with our Rideshare program, but everything has gone smoothly. We support Ward 8 and Marion Barry.”
Masters Barry said the renamed street, which runs through Ward 7 and Ward 8, symbolizes the late mayor and council member’s desire to help the less fortunate.
“We hope the renaming makes it a better street,” she said. “I hope it will be a positive avenue and get rid of the blight that is there.”
Stanley Jackson, president and CEO of the Anacostia Economic Development Corporation expressed similar thoughts about the corner of Marion Barry Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue attracting more profitable and upscale businesses.
“Marion Barry and Martin Luther King Jr., cared about the quality of life and quality of opportunities for people who had been left out of prosperity,” said Jackson, 70. “Our community does not lack talent. What we lack is opportunity.”
The Western Edge of Marion Barry Avenue: An Arts and Culture Hotspot
During the renaming ceremony, the Anacostia Business Improvement District hosted an interactive exhibit inside the Anacostia Arts Center dedicated to Barry’s legacy and impact. Affectionately called the “mayor for life,” the exhibit included historical footage and invited community members to share stories.
Visitors could also check out the current installation, which showcases the work of more than 20 different artists from Wards 7 and 8, according to the center’s associate creative director, Jess Randolph.
“One of our goals is to make sure that we can show the talent in our community,” Randolph said. “My favorite moments are often when artists come into the space, especially when they’re from the neighborhood or from the Ward, to talk about their art.”
In addition to E-Life Restaurant, Mahogany Books, a black box theater and a co-working space, the Center houses several Black-owned businesses (including a vintage clothing shop and a chiropractor) in a historic building by the intersection between Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and the former Good Hope Road.
The block — already a longtime home for art spaces like Honfleur Gallery and neon light artist’s Craig Kraft’s studio — has recently attracted more sit-down restaurants and other businesses.
Post-COVID, Randolph said she’s seen “more unity” and increased emphasis on serving the community among the businesses and organizations operating in the neighborhood. She’s also enthusiastic about the growing diversity of food, arts, retail and workspace options on the block.
“There’s so much more variety here than there was before,” Randolph, who has worked at the Center for more than six years, said. “There’s so much variety of Black brilliance here… It’s an exciting season, I think, to be working here, specifically in this area.”
Jermaine Powell, who runs the front desk at Anacostia Arts Center, said the influx of different kinds of businesses, especially restaurants, have also brought different kinds of people to the neighborhood and through the center’s doors.
“It’s bringing everybody together,” Powell said. “This used to be, like, prominent Black people. Now you see all different cultures, coming in and out, walking down the street. And I think that’s a good thing.”
Mahogany Books first opened up the Anacostia location more than five years ago, in 2018 (recently, the bookshop added a third location in Dulles International Airport). But Briana Littlejohn, who has worked at the store for two years, still sees customers — both visitors to the neighborhood and longtime residents — surprised at finding the spot.
“They’re amazed — they’re like, I never knew this was here,” Littlejohn said. “Most of the time, it’s people who are like, ‘wow, I’ve lived here this whole time, how long have you guys been here?’”
The Eastern Edge of Marion Barry Avenue: Long-Delayed Redevelopment Efforts
Kenneth White, who grew up nearby and now lives around Robinson Place in Southeast, said he hadn’t heard much about the street’s name change. The Informer caught up with him outside the Starbucks in Skyland Town Center, where White said he came to sit because it felt “peaceful and relaxing.”
Despite unseasonably warm weather and a number of empty places to sit, White was one of the only people in sight on the block. That’s a major change from how White remembers the area before the recent development in the shopping center at the end of the former Good Hope Road.
“I used to come out here and just chill, sit around — I didn’t feel like an outcast or nothing… there used to be a lot of people out here just hanging, chilling,” White said. “Now I just feel like I should be doing something else with my time.”
Development plans for the 18-acre Skyland Town Center, which sits at the eastern end of the new Marion Barry Avenue, have been underway for more than two decades. The project is “designed to promote neighborhood revitalization and economic growth,” according to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development’s office website.
The city used eminent domain to seize the land in 2004, pushing out several small businesses without having a clear plan for what would come next. Problems, including Walmart’s infamous withdrawal from a deal in 2016, plagued the process for Skyland. The long-delayed construction began in 2018.
Today, the shopping center includes more than 15 businesses. It’s a mix of national chains, such as CVS and Chase Bank, and a few local favorites, such as Like That Barbershop and a HalfSmoke location coming soon.
“They’re making it more, like, catchy on the eyes — more appealing to people,” White said. “They’re putting more apartments and businesses in this area… you gotta keep trying to do something good with your time; if not, you will be left behind. You gotta better yourself.”
Sitting inside the Skyland Starbucks, Bob Hewlin beamed at the thought of walking along a major street named after a man who helped her during her adolescence.
When The Informer sat down with Hewlin, she recounted she and others participating in an on-site job interview at a dinner that Barry hosted in the 1990s. She said that Barry inspired people to fulfill their potential, telling The Informer about her desire to see a similar attitude permeate throughout her community.
Hewlin, who lives nearly three blocks from Marion Barry Avenue, spoke about a time when people respected business establishments and community members walked down the street without fear of getting harmed.
While she acknowledged a few people, like a street vendor, who protected her at times, Hewlin said that more people, including elected officials, must embody the spirit of Marion S. Barry Jr. to truly make good on his legacy.
“If you came to Marion Barry with a problem, he’ll help you right then and there,” Hewlin said.
“It wasn’t during election season. He could be out minding his business. He was good with the seniors and the young people. Nowadays, these [elected officials] only come out when they’re trying to get votes, and [the government] cleans the streets before.”
