This Juneteenth weekend, join the DC Legacy Project for the free premiere screening of Barry Farm: Community, Land & Justice in Washington, DC.
Take a left off the Anacostia Freeway on to Firth Sterling Ave – what do you see? You see empty fields. You see shiny new buildings just breaking ground. Construction equipment. Sweeping views of the capital. As one community member states in this film, if you are a developer, you see a gold mine.
But these empty fields hold powerful memories. Enslaved people once worked this land. Later, during Reconstruction, the formerly enslaved purchased it, and built one of DC’s first thriving Black communities.
Here, the city constructed a sprawling public housing complex in the 1940s, beloved by insiders, if notorious to outsiders. Here, the movement for Welfare Rights took shape. Here, the Junkyard Band honed its chops on homemade instruments before putting a turbocharge into the city’s Go-Go music. Here, residents lived in the Barry Farms Dwellings up until 2018, when the final community members were removed for the redevelopment.
This documentary film, a collaboration between the DC Legacy Project and the Bertelsmann Foundation tells this story; of a journey for community, land, and for justice. It is a story of Barry Farm, but it is also a story of Washington, DC. And, in the cycles of place and displacement, it is a story of the United States of America.
Stay tuned following the film for a community conversation featuring:
Sabiyha Prince, Film Co-Director
Samuel George, Film Co-Director
Joseph Eaglin, Barry Farm Resident, 1944 - 1951
Stephen Gilbert, Descendant of Emily Edmonson
Arlene Horn-Dines, Barry Farms Resident, 1956 – 1974, Etta Horn’s Daughter
Amber N. Wiley, Historian, Rutgers University