Buck Hill’s Intersection
The four corners of 14th and U are presided over by the mural of Buck Hill, a lifelong Washingtonian who played sax with Dizzy and Miles but instead of going out on the road with them, Buck preferred to stay near Black Broadway. For 40 years, he worked here as a letter carrier.
These days, the historic intersection of 14th and U is D.C. in microcosm – with a bank and a Soul Cycle kitty-cornered from a large D.C. government building that helped foster the neighborhood’s economic revival, it’s a racially mixed meeting ground.
It’s notable, though, that when Buck Hill’s mural was unveiled in 2019, one speaker at the ceremony said, “As much as I love seeing Buck on the wall, I would love for there to be some affordable housing in this joint, so we – the people who look like him – can have a place to stay.”
At the corner of 14th and U Street, NW. November 2020.
The Winter of Covid
The winter of 2021 was hard on the neighborhood, given that most of the jobs here are tied to restaurants, bars and retail establishments. Almost a year after Washington went into Covid lockdown, restaurants struggled, and everyone wore masks.
One day in early February, I spotted this couple preparing to eat lunch inside a makeshift bubble on 14th Street, as two guys who’d been out shopping walked by. It seemed to capture the unearthly moment, as everyone adapted to the weird and hostile environment. What choice was there?
14th between R and S, NW. February 2021.
On U Street
U Street, too, is changed from how it was before the ’68 uprising destroyed so many buildings, but it still retains its role as a center of Black Washington. If it is no longer truly the City Within the City, it remains a distinct and historic mile-long street.
Whereas 14th Street has been claimed as a multiracial shopping and entertainment enclave, no matter how fancy the new restaurants and condo buildings that have sprung up here might be, U Street is a reminder of those days when D.C. was honored by George Clinton’s Parliament with a song called “Chocolate City.” (“They still call it the White House, but that’s a temporary condition too/Can you dig it D.C.?”) Today, you can still hear echoes of Duke Ellington playing in neighborhood nightclubs, and Miles Davis’s ghost lives on downstairs at Bohemian Caverns.
A walk along U is gloriously punctuated with murals inside its many alleys, and Ben’s Chili Bowl – a half century after being one of the lone businesses to survive the destruction of ’68 -- remains its beating heart. White visitors are always welcomed, and yet it’s wise to remember that this is a neighborhood African Americans celebrate, revel in and, at least among those of a certain age, view as hallowed ground.
U Street, at the corner of 11th Street, NW. April 2021.
14th Street, between T and S Street, NW. November 2020.
Near 14th and U Street, NW. November 2020.
T Street, just west of 14th Street, NW. January 2021.
14th and U Street, NW. March 2021.
14th and U Street, NW. March 2021.
The Neighborhood of Resistance
U Street was once known as the City Within the City, a place where African American commerce and culture could thrive despite Jim Crow.
During the Trump years, 14th and U was the spiritual epicenter of the District’s resistance to the occupant of the Oval Office less than one mile away. Downtown accommodates itself to whichever party is in power; 14th and U has an attitude and feels free to express it.
Black Lives Matter signs were everywhere. Along U Street, they were often simply lettered, scrawled cries from the heart. Along the more commercial and prosperous 14th Street, the signs sometimes seemed art directed.
In the early winter of 2021, 14th and U seemed like a rebel outpost — and given the fear that the insurrectionists might return to the Capitol and White House — a safe place to be.
14th Street, between Corcoran Street and R Street, NW. February 2021.
Ben’s Chili Bowl, U Street, NW. January 2021.
14th Street between R and S, NW. February 2021.
14th Street and P Street, NW. March 2021.
Just a few weeks after the January 6th Insurrection, a White guy in a car festooned with American flags and Jesus insignia pulled up on 14th Street.
I walked up to him, warily. It seemed possible he was a harbinger of the next invasion to come.
Turns out he’d just dropped off his sick cat at the animal hospital. He was very worried about his cat.
14th Street, between S and T Streets, NW. February 2021.
On April 20th, in a courtroom in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd.
I went over to 14th Street to see how folks were reacting to the news, but people were just going about their business.
14th Street, NW. April 2021.
U Street, between 14th and 13th Streets, NW. January 2021.
14th Street, between R Street and Riggs Street, NW. February 2021.
Paul Robeson mural, U Street, Between 14th and 13th Streets, NW. March 2021.
14th and R Streets, NW. February 2021.
U Street, between 12th and 13th Streets, NW. March 2021.
U Street, between 11th and 10th Streets, NW. February 2021.
U and 12th Streets, NW. April 2021.
U and 13th Streets, NW. February 2021.
Spring Came At Last
At first tentatively, and then as the weather warmed and -- under the gentle, genial presidency that had just begun -- more vaccines became available, the neighborhood began to exhale.
U Street, between 11th Street and Vermont Avenue, NW. April 2021.
U Street, between 14th and 13th Streets, NW. April 2021.
U Street, between 12th and 13th Street, NW. March 2021.
14th Street, Between S and T Streets, NW. March 2021.
Why Don’t You Take a Picture of Us?
As the weeks progressed, I became more confident as a street photographer. I don’t have the critical distance, or maybe it’s self-awareness, to know whether this just means my privilege allowed me to become more comfortable taking pictures of people in a neighborhood in which I was a guest. (I live in a leafy, predominantly White D.C. neighborhood maybe three miles away.)
Wearing a mask – as I did until the very end – deprived me of the street photographer’s most disarming tool – the ability to smile. No one seemed really to notice me, except that time guys on a stoop called after me. “Hey, old white guy.”
I turned.
“You take pictures here all the time. Why don’t you take a picture of us?”
U Street, between 14th and 13th Street, NW. April 2021.
7th Street, between T Street and Florida Avenue, NW. May 2021.
7th Street, between T Street and Florida Avenue, NW. May 2021.
Alley by the Howard Theater, T Street NW. May 2021.
The Return of Nightlife
The warm spring air meant people could go out at night and eat and drink comfortably once again.
My memories of these weeks are slightly dreamy. It was as if we had been frozen and as our encasement in ice ended, we were euphoric to find life as it once was. Things were different, of course, but also, amazingly, back to normal.
14th Street, between S and T Streets, NW. April 2021.
U Street, between 11th and 10th Street, NW. April 2021.
U Street, between 13th and 12th Streets, NW. April 2021.
14th and S Streets, NW. May 2021.
One night late in May I came across a street party at the corner of 14th and U.
It felt like an armistice had been declared.
14th and U Streets, NW. May 2021.
A Sample of Images from "Pictures of U"
From the FOREWORD
The corner of 14th and U Street NW is not the Washington, D.C., that tourists visit, that elegant city of cherry blossoms and monuments. The neighborhood around 14th and U Street is a gritty patch of murals and alleys, and a vibrant multiracial crossroads. It is a dynamic slice of the real D.C., and it’s gorgeous.
The intersection is infused with—and burdened by— history. On April 4, 1968, the night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, 14th and U became the street corner from which a paroxysm of rage left a swath of D.C.’s urban core in a shambles for decades.
Long before the ’68 riots tore the area apart, U Street was Black Broadway, the city’s most illustrious African American neighborhood, and 14th Street was a prosperous commercial corridor serving a largely Black community.
Some neighborhoods around U Street are still recovering in a city that has become increasingly affluent. The stretch of upscale retail and restaurants that has spread along 14th Street since the ’90s is the paradigm of urban gentrification. Many families who lived in the neighborhood were displaced by rising rents and had to move. What once was a Black neighborhood, struggling in the final decades of the 20th century, has become increasingly white. Much of the area’s rental housing has been transformed into luxury apartments and con- dos, fancy national chain stores have moved in and the burgeoning restaurant scene long ago claimed Washington’s center of gravity, at least after dark.
But despite all of its continued problems, 14th and U also remains one of the city’s multiracial success stories. In a progressive city that remains highly segregated, 14th and U is genuinely diverse.
I’ve been bringing my camera here for years—for the annual Funk Parade, for the pageantry of the streets at night, for the coexisting mix of Black and white D.C. Between the 2020 election and Memorial Day 2021, Iall but parked myself here, camera in hand. The neighborhood struggled through a bitter pandemic winter and braced for more trouble following the January 6 insurrection not very far away on Capitol Hill. But after Trump left town, as the weather warmed and the vac- cine rollout provided folks with hope, people once again were able to revel with friends. These were still hard times, but the joy in the streets was palpable.
For a long time, I called this project “14th and You,” because surely, who you are drives how you see 14th and U Streets. Calling 14th and U a multiracial suc- cess reveals my perspective; others, particularly those struggling in the gentrification age, may not see it that way. As a white D.C. street photographer, everything about my relationship to U Street and my photographic subjects is informed by race and privilege. The time I’ve spent in the neighborhood generated a running internal dialogue on why I felt I could enter an his- toric Black neighborhood and take pictures of anyone and everyone.
After a while, though, as the air warmed and the mood softened—and I hope the photographs reveal this—my street-level view of the cultural overlap at 14th and U became a celebration of what I believe is D.C.’s emblematic urban neighborhood, and perhaps even the heart of Washington, D.C.
—John Buckley