Ward 5 Honors Black History Heroes: Alexander Crummell Way Unveiled in Ivy City

By Kayla Benjamin

Nine streets across Ward 5 will host naming ceremonies this year as the city symbolically designates them in honor of local Black history giants. First up: Alexander Crummell Way in Ivy City.

“Today is not just a day to name a street, but it’s [a day] to honor the legacy of a man whose life and story was of triumph over adversity and injustice,” Ivy City ANC Commissioner Sebrena Rhodes said in remarks at the street-naming ceremony Friday morning. 

More than two dozen community members, religious leaders and local government representatives gathered to celebrate the new name for Gallaudet Street NE, where Ivy City’s cherished Crummell School sits. Ward 5 Council member Zachary Parker hosted the event; it was Parker who introduced a slate of bills last year calling for the symbolic street designations in honor of Black history figures with connections to Ward 5.

Crummell was an abolitionist scholar, educator and Episcopalian minister who lived in D.C. for more than 20 years in the late 1800s. During that time, he founded and served as pastor for the District’s first Black Episcopal church; nearly 150 years later, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church is still active. 

Crummell also taught at Howard University and started the American Negro Academy (ANA), which focused on publishing scholarly work regarding African American culture and history. The ANA brought in history-making members like W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Laurence Dunbar. 

In keeping with that legacy of academic excellence, Ivy City — one of D.C.’s oldest Black neighborhoods — named its elementary school, built in 1911, in honor of Crummell. The District shut down the Crummell School in the 1970s, allowing the building to fall into disrepair and cutting off Ivy City and Trinidad residents from a crucial community center.

For more than a decade, Ivy City residents and organizing group Empower DC have fought to revitalize the historic school and make sure development on the site actually benefits the community. They’ve won several key victories: in 2013, Empower DC successfully sued the District to stop the site — which is surrounded by high-traffic roads, industrial facilities and other pollution sources — from becoming a bus depot. Then in 2021, following a yearslong pressure campaign, the city agreed to fund construction of a community center on the Crummell campus.

“Led by Commissioner Rhodes [and] Empower DC, Ivy City won the fight to protect this landmark,” Parker said at the naming event. “That fight was not easy. It was many years in the making. And what that fight was about was more than a building: it was for the city to acknowledge and recognize the needs of this community.”

The Crummell Campus will become a renewed community resource for a historic Black neighborhood as a result of Ivy City residents’ mobilization. It’s fitting that the street where the site is located will also bear the name of Crummell, a fierce abolitionist and activist for global Black empowerment.

“This street and this school are testament to the struggles Black people have had and continue to have to be seen as human beings — full human beings who claim our rightful place not only in the church, but in this city and this country,” said the Rev. Gayle Fisher-Stewart, president of the Crummell-Cooper DC Chapter Union of Black Episcopalians. 

Fortunately, the new street signage didn’t require a drawn-out battle. Unlike the recent renaming of Marion Barry Avenue, Alexander Crummell Way’s new street designation is symbolic — it won’t require any postal address changes. 

Parker introduced a slate of street designation bills in February 2023, in honor of Black History Month. The Council passed the bills into law in the fall, and they took effect on Dec. 20. 

The other eight history-makers being honored with street signs in Ward 5 are William R. Spaulding, Julius Hobson Sr., Sterling A. Brown, Edna Brown Coleman, Rayford Logan, Jesse Mitchell, Lee Elder and Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee.

“We know that D.C. will forever be Chocolate City,” Parker said. “But we also know that Chocolate City is looking a little different nowadays — and we welcome change, and we welcome diversity. But it’s important that we remember those who have given so much to our communities and our city.”