Not to tell my age, but I have kids some of your ages. Anyway, I’m white and Jewish and spent the first 8 years of my life in far SE, what some might call Anacostia. Actually, it’s further out than Anacostia, near the Greater Southeast Community Hospital or whatever they call it currently. I remember the chair on MLK Avenue, which used to be called Nichols Ave, in front of the Curtis Brothers Furniture Store. Any old time Washingtonian will remember that. Parts of the area are extremely dangerous now, with drug dealing rampant. Next to the metro on Alabama Ave (I think it’s Congress Heights) and close to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, there are several old Jewish cemeteries. I love going back to visit the old neighborhood, even though nothing of my childhood remains. My kids say I’m the only white lady who knows her way around that part of town.

Not really. Where we grew up back in the 50s and 60s, the neighborhood was very Jewish. Then the great migration to the suburbs began. Not to avoid integration, in my family’s case, but to move from an apartment to a house with a yard.