♪ I know you want to leave me ♪
♪ But I refuse just to let the Farm go ♪
♪ If I have to beg and plead for the state on me ♪
♪ I don't mind, but I don't want to leave here ♪
♪ Ain't too proud to beg ♪
♪ Sweet Farm ♪
♪ Please don't let us go, don't you know ♪
My name is Sean Brown, but they call me Maybaum.
That's representing my grandmother that lived here
and did a whole lot for the Farms.
If I turn around, I could point out to you,
I lived at Eaton Road right there, 1217.
-They demolished my home for the new rebuilding
of Barry Farms.
It makes me feel a little sad
because it's like my history being taken away from me.
-Growing up on the Farms was really, really,
really wonderful. It was fun.
See, I was a little skittish guy.
I used to run around.
If you didn't catch me, you were in trouble.
-My mother came in 1962.
When we got down here, everybody welcomed her with open arms.
You could leave your doors open.
-Today, I moved out. What?
I look back at this as I'm leaving home,
but I wasn't gonna leave home,
because I know I'm just coming back.
I'ma always come back.
Looking at it right now, I'm trying to picture
how it's going to look, and I'm hoping some people
that moved out get a chance to come back.
-We know the future by the past.
Barry Farm is one of DC's most historic black communities
originally founded just after emancipation
by the Freedmen's Bureau.
-They not only built their houses from scratch here,
but they built the whole community.
They built churches, they built schools.
This legacy of that community sort of carried
on into the 20th century
with the development of the public housing.
The three parallel streets that go through Barry Farm
are remnants of the 1867 Freedmen's Bureau communities.
-And the names of abolitionists these streets are named for.
-By 1950, there was no junior high school east
of the Anacostia River that admitted black students.
The schools were all segregated at that time.
When a brand-new junior high school
opened nearby for white students,
they showed up at the door and demanded to be admitted.
This was the beginnings of a case called Bolling v Sharpe
that ultimately went to the Supreme Court
as a companion case to Brown v Board of Education.
Resulted in the desegregation of schools within the district.
It is important that a DC case accompanied Brown
v Board of Education because DC's not a state
and therefore not necessarily subject to the 14th Amendment.
Stevens Road is the area
that is the subject of the landmark nomination
because a lot of the plaintiffs in Bolling v Sharpe
lived along Stevens Road.
That includes Adrienne and Barbara Jennings.
-So, the Jennings sisters,
they lived right through this path here
on the 1100 block of Stevens Road.
-DC is known for the Washington Monument
and the Smithsonian Institution
and the Mall and the Congress and the White House,
and we should not be playing a role
in the diminishment of the local history
as just as significant as any of those federal places
and those federal monuments.
-This was a place for slaves during the Civil War to come.
So, I think that for the legacy of this particular area
in Southeast,
this should still be that particular place
that people should be able to come and live,
and it shouldn't be based upon your income.
-Declaring Barry Farm a historic landmark will ensure
that our history is remembered, that our stories are told,
and that we will see our reflections in this community
for years to come despite the fact that so much
of what has been familiar about DC has changed around us.
Barry Farm is historic.
The only question before us is whether you,
Historic Preservation Review Board members,
will give it the landmark status
and recognition that it deserves.
Thank you.