Despite the apparent somnolence, DC was actually undergoing a mass migration of blacks from further south. Almost from its beginning, DC had been the first stop in the promised land. Now the city had just turned into a majority black town.
Despite the demographic trend, however, there was nothing remotely approaching black power. More than once, when calling the DC police dispatcher to check on the overnight action, I was told, "Nothin' but a few nigger stabbings." It had, after all, only been twelve years since the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell arrived to take his seat in the House of Representatives. Stepping into his office for the first time he found a memo on his desk headed "Dos and Don'ts for Negro Congressmen." One was "Don't eat in the House dining room."
The city was run by three commissioners appointed by the president. Many, though, assumed correctly that the real commissioner was the director of the very white Board of Trade. The local papers routinely listed the race of victims and perpetrators in crime stories. A Washington Star veteran recalled "the grieving widow who called me one day after I'd done an obit about her late husband, in which I had referred to him as a D.C. native. 'He wasn't no native,' she shrieked. 'He was as white as you or I!'" And when I went to cover the annual Brotherhood Week luncheon at a local hotel, a reporter leaned over and said, "Do you notice the only Negroes in this place are the waiters?".
This same reporter called me at 2 a.m. the morning after the funeral of Sweet, Precious Daddy Grace, the colorful bishop of the United House of Prayer for All People. "I'm down here waiting for them to choose Daddy Grace's successor," he whispered into the phone, "and I'm the only white person here. How about coming down?"
I had covered the funeral earlier that day and had been struck by the jewelry bedizening the lifeless and red, white and blue long finger-nailed form of the late charismatic - who one paper said resembled Buffalo Bill. I got dressed and joined my friend at 601 M St. NW -- two young, unwelcomed white guys sitting quietly in the pre-dawn darkness of a church basement hallway waiting for the end of a seven-hour deliberation. Finally, the 224 elders from as far away as New Bedford, Mass., and Miami selected Bishop Walter McCullough by about 30 votes.
Daddy Grace has been born Manoel da Graca, a Cape Verde immigrant to New Bedford and a cranberry picker who would come to claim that God had also come to America in his body. He would eventually give baptisms to up to 1,000 at a time and accept "love offerings" from female followers. Among the tenets of his theology: "Salvation is by Grace alone. Grace has given God a vacation. If you sin against God, Grace can save you, but if you sin against Grace, God can't save you."
Daddy Grace, came to DC in 1927 and, according to Molly Rath in Washington City Paper, left this world a debt-burdened $25 million estate including an 85 room mansion in Los Angeles, a farm in Cuba and a coffee plantation in Brazil. Along with quotations like, "If Moses came here now he would have to follow this man," pointing to himself.
In much of Washington, though, not much was happening. This was a town, after all, where the leading department store had only begun Sunday advertising after the war. This was a town where Mrs. Eisenhower's secretary had trouble charging a pair of gloves for her employer at the White House. The Eisenhowers had, after all, been out of DC for some time and their account had been closed. The clerk, the secretary was told, would have to check with the manager.
Only a handful of restaurants, such as the just opened Anna Maria's on Connecticut Ave.(with the most costly item being veal scallopini at $4.25), the A.V. Ristorante on NY Ave, and spots along U Street stayed open after midnight. It was still illegal to drink standing up or to carry your drink from the bar to your table.
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LOUIS ARMSTRONG AT THE CHARLES HOTEL PHOTO: HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON |
It was not easy to find good music either, among the exceptions being the Howard Theater, the Charles Hotel, and the Showboat Lounge. The Howard was built during DC's black renaissance with black capital and was the best place to hear the best acts. But musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarten also showed up at the Charles Hotel on R Street for jam sessions. I never caught one of the big names there but I did hear a young clarinet player named Jimmy Hamilton who four decades later would play in my own combo. And at the Showboat, a guitarist named Charlie Byrd was making a big name for himself, aided by as bass player who would become perhaps Washington's most ubiquitous musician, Keter Betts.
My own late night snacking choice was the DC Diner, which squatted in a parking lot near Vermont & L NW. The silver diner had a conventional counter filling about two thirds of its length, with a little paneled nook at one end just large enough for several tables and a display of race track photos. Into the DC Diner came cops, drunks and prostitutes and, on early Sunday mornings, congregants from the midnight "printers' mass" the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception thoughtfully provided late shift workers at the Government Printing Office as well as for the Catholic young men returning from dates.
My routine was to order the steak and egg breakfast. A beefy cook would grab a couple of eggs and burst them on the grill. The steak followed. He then reached over for a handful of home fries from the foot-high pile that sat nearly cooked in a cool corner of the stove. Almost simultaneously the chef lunged for a fistful of salad from a five gallon potato chip can resting under the counter and plopped it into a side dish. During the whole procedure no kitchen utensil touched his hands, yet few meals have tasted as good.
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