Barry Farm Dwellings

Construction of Barry Farm Dwellings began with America’s entry into World War II. As tens of thousands of people moved to Washington for federal government jobs to aid in the war effort, the city experienced a serious housing shortage that was particularly severe for African Americans. To help alleviate the problem, the  Alley Dwelling Authority  built Barry Farm Dwellings, a public housing complex for African Americans, in 1942.

In recent years the Barry Farm Tenants and Allies Association (BFTAA) fought against the proposed elimination of Barry Farm Dwellings and the displacement of its residents. In 2019, as the DC Housing Authority began the demolition of Barry Farm Dwellings to make way for  new development , BFTAA succeeded in having a section designated as a historic district. Although most of Barry Farm Dwellings has been demolished, the surviving buildings provide a physical reminder of the importance of the site, its people and events.

The land on which Barry Farm Dwellings stood was part of an existing  African American community that was established following the Civil War by the  Freedmen's Bureau , a government agency created in 1865 to assist the country’s four million formerly enslaved as they began their new life. 

Roads named for anti-slavery legislators (Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner and Benjamin Wade) and Freedmen Bureau officials (John Eaton and Oliver O. Howard) served the subdivision. Large blocks were divided into one-acre lots that offered expansive green space for small-scale farming. Freedmen were hired to do the initial site work of clearing the heavily forested and hilly land and cutting roads. As the land was cleared and the streets cut, the Bureau sold individual lots, along with the necessary building materials for the construction of a modest house to newly freed persons for prices ranging from $125 to $300.

Hundreds of families settled in Barry Farm in the first few years. The 1870 Census reveals that many residents were skilled workers — blacksmiths, carpenters, bricklayers, and painters — who were essential to the plantation economy before the War and contributed to the development of the growing city after the War.

During the lead-up to the United States’ entry into World War II, eight- to ten-million Americans migrated to areas of the country that offered war-related employment. The 10,000 African Americans who came to Washington represented a 30% increase in DC's black population. Many came in search of federal jobs that were newly available to them, largely due to President Franklin Roosevelt’s  Executive Order 8802  (June 1941) that barred racial discrimination in defense industries.

While Roosevelt’s Executive Order opened the job market up for African Americans and encouraged an influx of new residents to the city, these newcomers faced an already severe housing shortage as racial restrictions and other barriers limited the supply of housing for blacks. To help relieve the housing crisis, the  Alley Dwelling Authority  purchased 34 acres within the Barry Farm/Hillsdale area for the construction of public housing for African Americans.

Opened in 1942 and completed in 1943, the Barry Farm Dwellings public housing complex offered residency on a prioritized basis: those persons who had been displaced by war-related projects were given first priority, while those who worked in war-related jobs, or who were employed by the military, were given secondary preference.

The Barry Farm Dwellings housing complex followed the best design principles of the day.  Its 442 units, representing 20 percent of the city's low-income housing for African Americans during World War II, were highly sought-after.

Meanwhile, private developers, with the benefit of an expanded  federal mortgage guarantee program  beginning in March 1941, built nearly 900,000 new housing units during the war almost exclusively for whites. Most of this housing — modest and affordable single-family homes — was built beyond the city’s downtown, encouraging an exodus of white residents and disinvestment in the city.  

As the government and private developers invested in other areas of the city, Barry Farm was denied basic services and amenities like schools and grocery stores.  As the housing complex became isolated from the rest of the city, the Barry Farm community had to fend for itself.

One fight the residents of Barry Farm Dwellings took up was crucial to the desegregation of schools. Beginning in the 1940s, when there was not a single junior high or high school for blacks east of the Anacostia River, Barry Farm residents mobilized to demand better educational opportunities for their children. Several families at Barry Farm Dwellings became plaintiffs in lawsuits against DC Public Schools, including Bolling v. Sharpe that would later be taken up by the Supreme Court as a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education.

After the students were turned away, attorneys  James Nabrit  and  George E.C. Hayes  sued DC Board of Education President Melvin Sharpe in Bolling v. Sharpe, charging that the segregation of DC’s schools was unconstitutional. The US District Court dismissed the suit; however, the  U.S. Supreme Court  asked to hear  Bolling v. Sharpe  as a companion case to  Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas .

This request was based upon the fact that the District of Columbia is not a state and the Brown case was being argued under the 14th Amendment which requires only “states” to provide equal treatment to citizens. As part of the combined decision, the Court ruled that segregating the District’s schools violated the 5th Amendment’s guarantee that the federal government treat all citizens with “due process of law.”

Barry Farm residents hosted fundraising dinners and raffles at Campbell AME, and collected contributions to pay for legal expenses. The attorneys themselves worked for free. In September 1954, after the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Sousa Junior High opened its doors to residents of Barry Farm. 

Although just over twenty years old, Barry Farm Dwellings had, by the mid-1960s, fallen into a neglected and deteriorated state. Rats and cockroaches were rampant, faucets leaked, and building appliances and finishes were failing as the city stopped providing even basic services. Homegrown activist groups established themselves to combat the deplorable state of the buildings and grounds and to provide improved and safer living conditions.

The Band of Angels, a tenants’ council made up of women and led by Stevens Road residents Lillian Wright and Etta Mae Horn, was one such activist group. It emerged out of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty program which provided federal funds and trained organizers to help establish tenants' associations at low-income public and private housing complexes to advocate for its residents. The Angels' first achievement was an urgently needed $1.5 million renovation of Barry Farm Dwellings.  Etta Horn later became an influential civil rights leader and served as vice chair of the National Welfare Rights Organization.

Another Barry Farm group that emerged during the 1960s, Rebels with a Cause, advocated for better policing and infrastructure improvements for Barry Farm. The group, including approximately 250 young adults and teenagers, were coached by seasoned activists.