during the Scottsboro campaign in 1932 when communists staged a prohibited march on the Supreme Court. The tactic of civil disobedience for civil rights was introduced in Washington, D.C.
The nascent civil rights movement in the Washington area tried a number of tactics to fight the renewed denial of the rights of African Americans ranging from protests against lynching to armed self-defense during the Washington “riot” of 1919.Īn unauthorized march to “Free the Scottsboro Boys” at the Supreme Court in 1932 introduces civil disobedience to the early rights movement. The park didn’t fare well featuring performing arts and converted to an amusement park in the early twentieth century.Īt the time Glen Echo opened, the reversal of African American gains during the Reconstruction period was at its peak and both terror and new segregationist laws were enforcing Jim Crow. Streetcar service to Glen Echo began the same year. The storied Glen Echo Amusement Park opened in 1891 as a segregated facility featuring concerts and other arts performances. The successful attempt, in turn, sowed some of the seeds of the black power movement later in the decade. Lost in the re-telling of the story is how some white participants worked to depose the black leader of NAG in the middle of the Glen Echo fight and replace him with one more palatable to the Kennedy-Johnson presidential ticket that opposed enacting national legislation on civil rights. It was a resounding victory all the way around–both in the social forces involved and the outcome. Such use of a state agent to enforce segregation was illegal, the Supreme Court ruled in 1964. The effort involved harassment and arrests and resulted in a precedent setting court case establishing that an off-duty sheriff deputy employed as a park guard conducting the arrests at the behest of the park owners was in fact an agent of the state. Together they sustained the picket lines through the summer heat in the face of American Nazi Party counter demonstrators until the owners gave in and finally desegregated the facility the following spring. The neighboring residents of the overwhelmingly white and majority Jewish community of Bannockburn joined them. The story of the effort to end segregation at Glen Echo Amusement Park in Montgomery County, Maryland 55 years ago is an inspiring one that continues to be celebrated today.Ī mixed group of black and white college students from the local Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) began picketing the facility in June 1960 calling for an end to the privately owned park’s policy of barring African Americans. And bricks, decades old, stick out of the ground where a foundation lies and rusted pipes show the basic plumbing of the time - all of it waiting to be rediscovered.Protesters demand Glen Echo admit African Americans in 1960. The intact railroad bridge floats above nature: creeks and rocks crawl out of its old tunnel. Today, Glen Echo’s history as an amusement park is still evident, with a pavilion of bumper cars, a carousel and the park’s iconic popcorn stand.Īnd while the streetcars no longer operate, the tracks are still visible to those open to exploring one of Glen Echo’s more hidden trails, located between the parking lot and MacArthur Boulevard. Records show up to 25,000 customers visited the park each weekend. (It was) far enough removed from the city that the real estate didn’t have a great deal of value and close enough to the city so that the streetcar could earn a lot of money,” Gardner says. “The streetcar companies built these amusement parks, and the Washington Contraction Company built one at Glen Echo. Today, Glen Echo’s history as an amusement park is still evident. To ensure customers kept riding the rails, the company came up with a plan: build an amusement park - a destination to which people could ride the streetcars. At the time, WECC was responsible for streetcars. However, the planned community did not work out, and the land changed ownership multiple times.Īfter the credit crunch of 1893, Baltzley foreclosed and sold the land to the Washington Electric Contraction Company in 1897.
Wtop traffic glen echo october 2015 series#
“(Then owner) Edwin Baltzley wanted to take advantage of (the streetcars) by building a series of suburban communities in the middle of nowhere,” Gardner says. National Park Service Ranger Zach Gardner says what is now Glen Echo was originally destined to be a suburb in the 1890s - the time period when streetcars began to sweep the country. The park, which is managed by the National Park Service, is filled with creeks, an abandoned railway and curious trails.
WASHINGTON – Surrounded by the Potomac River, the Capital Beltway, Bethesda, Md., and the most northwest corners of the District, sits one of the Washington area’s most historic parks: Glen Echo. Business & Finance Click to expand menu.
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