Interview with Nadia Johnson, April 1, 2022

Okay. Today is April 1st 2022. We're in front of the Martin Luther King Junior branch of the DC Public Library, downtown Washington, DC. Could you tell us your name?

Nadia Johnson.

And you're here with?

Roxie. She's my service dog.

She's great. She's very friendly.

And so, as you know, we're talking about how downtown has changed over the course of your memory. Maybe before we start up, could you tell me how long you've been in Washington, DC?

20 years. I grew up here, well, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but I grew up mostly here.

Nice. Hold on one second. I just realized that [adjusting microphones] - Alright, we're back.

And so what are your your first memories of downtown Washington?

Well, my first memory was, what we see as the street outside of MLK actually used to be a park. It used to be a partland homeless people used to live here and then they - The old Convention Center used to be up the street from here and then they tore that down and it was really historical. I thought they probably [would] never tear it down because when Nelson Mandela was first newly freed, he came here as the new president of South Africa and he was in the old convention center and the room and lot of people protested and petition to save it because that was an historic event, but they tore it down anyway.

And then they moved - the new Convention Center is like two block from where it used to be and it's way bigger. And so they took a street or two and they also wiped out another homeless shelter, or shelter, to build the new Convention Center. So it displaced a lot of people of the homeless population and then they went on and they took the park out and added the street [muffled] for the street they took from building the new Convention Center.

Woolworth's used be here, I remember shopping there when it was open. They kept the building because it is again a historical building, but they had some other stores in there and then they didn't last long. Then you had Madam Tousseau, I mean, Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum, now that's gone. You had the Pavilion. I used to love going there, they had all these little mini shops and ice cream stores and bakeries, game stores, all arcade games, shows how old I am from the eighties and nineties. But then Trump took over and now its all the hotel. People didn't like that because they thought he didn't understand the historical significance.

I took the tour of the bell tower when you could. The Pavilion office. Then there was - They built a lot of condos over top of buildings in downtown DC. And they also, the news museum came, the Native American museum came, the African American museum came, which they should have been for a while.

It's changed a lot and then in some ways it hasn't, because now the pandemic, the homeless have come back but they're at other parks and now the city has taken Franklin Park and that used to also be a place for homeless people.

They took that - they renovated that now so it doesn't even look like it used to look. Yeah, I don't think they allow the homeless people to come back and set up tents. Now you have various tent cities throughout DC. There's a couple up the street from here. They outside of some of the churches down here, the historical churches.

Then you have - Other things that have changed downtown -

I think it's mostly the businesses, a lot of the stores have gone out of business because of the pandemic. The homeless population has increased drastically. It's so sad, I mean, what they wiped out that made history and they replaced with a bunch of businesses that didn't survive the pandmeic.

Yeah. Good points. And so when you move to the city, what neighborhood did you move to?

Well, I was with my mom and dad. They were living in Adams Morgan and then they got divorced. With my mom, we moved around quite a bit. So I moved - I lived on Rhode Island Avenue then I moved to P [Street] in Northeast, then [muffled] area where Spingarn is the mall area. Then we moved back to Northwest on 12th and P Street. Now I'm on 8th and R Street in Shaw.

Okay. And did you go - So you went to high school -

Yeah. Elementary, middle school, and high school. My middle school is gone and my elementary school has been remade. I graduated from Pierce Elementary now and then I went to Garnet-Patterson Middle School, which is now no longer. Then I went to high school, I went to charter schools which was just starting to come out.

Did you - When you were a teenager did you come down here with friends?

I came down here all the time. [Muffled because of traffic] businesses are gone. I mean, they used to have a karate, martial arts store down here, they used to have Kemp Music down here. That's gone, the Basement is gone.

What was the Basement?

The Basement was - Filene's Basement was a clothing, department store. That's gone. That used to be in a little strip mall that they had on F Street. That's gone.

Alot of the businesses that were there are gone. The Eatery's still there. It's just changed so much. We used to have a bookstore, Olsson's (?) Bookstore, down here. That's gone. They changed it into a restaurant.

And when you all came down here - So you came down with friends like,

I came with my mother, myself. Because I always loved going to museums and we didn't have a strip mall back then. The strip mall was out in Southwest where my charter school was. I think by the time they opened up the one in Columbia Heights, I had just come out of high school. So it really was that much. You had the movie theater but then you also had [muffled] station down here. They closed that movie theater down but you still had [something] station. That's where a lot of us used to go. Now that's gone too.

I mean, Franklin, the Franklin School used to be there, there was a homeless shelter for a minute, that's gone. I mean, they didn't even do anything with the building. A lot of people, they wanted them to keep it as a shelter, and I think they should have, because at least the building was being in use. They renovated it, and they renovated it for what? It has not been in use for over ten years. You look at all these homeless people, they can easily fit into that big building. But, once again -

You're right.

I guess people have got more concerned about optics than people. So that's why it's so much easier to displace people who don't fit in a certain income bracket and that's that's the sad part, because you're losing your humanity, you just don't care about anyone anymore unless they make X amount of dollars. Those people who make X amount of dollars, you have to pray that they have enough charity to help people who are being displaced because of the pandemic, don't have a job, or lost their job, or even if they do have a job, they're just not in the same income bracket anymore because a lot of companies are cutting back hours or pay.

You know? I mean, it's just - Unless you're someone who had money like Bill Gates know you're willing to fill in the bench here.

Wow. Yeah, that was very powerful and we could probably talk more but I kind of like ending it on that note because I've - And is there anything else you'd like to share or -

No, but if you ever need a journalist or freelance journalist, I'm free. You have my information.

Thank you so much.