Perry and Vernon Suggs Interview, Adams Morgan Day, September 10, 2023

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Okay, this is Dan Kerr. Today is Adams Morgan Day 2023.
It's September 10th.
And could you tell us your names?
My name is Vernon C. Suggs.
And my name is Perry L. Suggs.
And could you tell us a little bit about what brought you here today?
Well, we came here to just actually to honor the New Thing
and this community and how Adams Morgan Day meant a lot to us and
over the years and many times that we've been here and how we
contributed to being you know to it by being participants of the
New Thing Art and Architectural Center and just to share a little
bit about how we came up in a New Thing.
What was that 40 years ago, 40 or 50 years ago?
Something like that.
Yeah. 1968.
And I believe we're on the corner of 18th and Belmont.
Yes You were raised on Belmont? Yes, we lived at 1802 Belmont
Road, Northwest.
And what was the neighborhood like
at that time when you first started getting involved with the
New Thing? It was a lot different than now.
It was, I mean, it wasn't as, as busy, you know.
You could tell the difference in the culture and the lifestyle from
then and now.
It was totally different.
Things changed a lot.
So, yeah Yeah, And this
neighborhood was going through a transition again.
Like, I mean, many times it's flipped.
I've seen this neighborhood flip over and it was mainly families, a
lot of families, family homes with families.
We were one of the few black, big black families around here and we
were fortunate enough to be able to live in the brownstone like
1802, because my mother had seven kids.
And, you know, the neighborhood was going through, once again, the
opioid, and opioid epidemic back in the 70s and through.
So you know a lot of it was a lot of urban plight going on stuff
like that.
You had a lot of young people that
were sort of misplaced because, you know, because of the drugs and
the, you know, poor, being poor, especially black families.
But it was organizations like the New Thing, the Ontario Lakers,
Marie H. Reed, the community center, which was on Seaton Street
years ago.
Bishop Reed, she was one of the
pioneers of everything.
Matter of fact, they named that
big school down there after her, that's Marie H. Reed.
And it was just going through this period of changing, becoming Adams
Morgan, because it wasn't always named Adams Morgan.
This community wasn't always named Adams Morgan.
You either went to Adams School or you went to Morgan School or
Morgan Annex.
Which Morgan Annex is now a condo,
very expensive.
They turned that into
condominiums.
And which school did you go to?
I attended Morgan and Morgan Annex.
So did I. And actually the site where Marie H. Reed is now
located, that was Morgan.
For the lower grade kids.
That was like kindergarten through.
Third, fourth, something like that.
Through fifth.
Yeah.
And what were the two schools, what was the, how would you
describe the two different schools, Adams and Morgan?
Well, you know, Adams was a little different.
It was up California Street up there.
And It was also a DC public school, but the curriculum at
Adams was a little different.
Because Morgan was beginning to
try this new curriculum where the kids went from class to class
instead of staying in one class all day.
They would have, you would take art from one teacher, take music
from another teacher, take another subject each, and you would, you
know, you would be mobile as a student.
You go from class to class.
Yeah.
And that that that brought in the new era.
That's one of the ways that this Adams Morgan was changing things
around here.
And then, you know, you had the
city council and stuff was being formed, I believe it was changing
because I remember people like David Clark, Marie Nahiki and
people like that, that I would see.
I would see every day.
They would always, I'd be running
around the neighborhood and I would see them.
Even when I got in trouble, David Clark, he was, I remember him, but
that's a whole different story.
But I didn't know they were
council members.
And at the time, David Clark was
the chairman of Council Marina Heekin, they were running.
Her fiance Maurice, he was like one of my big brothers, took me
under his wing and I would be over their house every day, I would go
past there, you know, make my way.
But anyway, that's the type of
community it was.
Everybody took, you know, people
would take us under their wing.
The village.
Yeah, it was really a village then.
And You said that there were some issues with the heroin.
How did you know, like you were young at the time, right?
Very young.
This was elementary school, if I'm
not mistaken.
Yeah, well, for one, you know, the
riots in 68, we experienced them.
I experienced 14th Street, U
Street, 14th Street, I experienced that being burned down to the
ground.
And I didn't understand a lot till
later because there was a lot of information and I can remember the
Black Panthers classes and stuff like that.
African liberation school.
Right.
He was in the African liberation school.
But I would go there sometimes to eat breakfast.
Mr. Clark, Ron Clark.
Yeah, Ron Clark and all those
people that ran RAP Incorporated.
He started RAP Incorporated, which
is now one of the longest surviving substance abuse programs
in the city.
It's known as Rapid Addiction,
Regional Addiction, something like that.
But I think Ron's still operating there, bro.
He's still living there.
Well, I know it's still operating.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's on 4th Street,
Northview.
But anyway, that was going on.
And I would see, we had a couple of drummers and we had a couple of
dancers that were addicted to heroin and I would also see them I
won't mention any names it wouldn't be fair to me so but
they, we would often see them, you know.
Up close and personal.
Right.
They would, they, we would see them doing their thing.
And, you know, and we'd then, when we would ask our parents and ask
people in the group, the older guys, they would tell us, you
know, cause every, the whole atmosphere was the educational
atmosphere at the New Thing, everything.
And they encouraged us to ask questions and be inquisitive about
everything.
That's what the New Thing was
about, so you could broaden your horizon and you could just be in
an environment of nurturing your, well I guess say your intellect.
It was that type of environment.
And the community, go ahead,
Perry, what were you going to say? Go ahead, no, go ahead.
And the community as a whole was going through this thing of
brotherly love and, you know, people coming together to heal,
you know, and in the aftermath of the riots and you know so it was
like the 70s black power all of this stuff and it I mean and the
epitome of it was right here, Adams Morgan.
So, you know, people were trying to embrace each other to get
through that.
And it was a pretty interesting
community, pretty interesting.
Perry, would you mind telling us a
little bit about the African Liberation School and what that
was like and how you got involved? No, I don't mind at all.
Well, it was a place, it was really created to kind of like, to
get young kids out of the neighborhoods, from getting in
trouble.
And they used to have activities
like, I learned how to do pottery on a potter's wheel.
They taught us about rights for black people.
They taught us about, they told us a lot of things about cops that
weren't fair to people of color.
They basically taught us about
human rights.
The reason they said it was to
liberate us so that we will know when we were being treated wrong
and you know could identify when we were being treated wrong.
And and you who was running the school or who are the kind of
people who inspired the school? Well at the time there was a guy
by the name of Ron Clark.
Okay.
Yeah.
Which Ron Clark?
Yeah, Ron Clark.
And actually that was before it
was even a treatment program.
It was a day program to teach the
young kids.
And it evolved into a substance
abuse treatment program.
Yeah.
And Where was that located? It was on 17th and Florida Avenue.
U Street.
Okay, yeah, that's U Street.
You right.
That changes to U Street.
I mean, Florida Avenue once you get further up.
But yeah, 17th and U. And the original drug program, the first
one, which was like a two years to two to three year program, live-in
program, was on Willard.
Yeah, Willard Street.
All right, so you all got involved with the New Thing.
I'm wondering if you might remember the first time you became
aware of the New Thing.
What got you interested in it.
Yeah, I can remember the first time I was kind of like made to go
there by my mom.
And the way that that happened is,
Topper and his fiance at the time lived around the corner from us.
And they kind of like adopted us as their kids.
And being with Betty, Betty Garment, she came, she used to
come and get us and actually bring us to the New Thing.
I can remember the first time coming here, I was really
reluctant, But once I got here and seen what was going on, oh,
couldn't keep me away.
Yeah, it was, yeah.
I mean, with all the other kids that were there, and it was
overall fun.
You know, it was a lot better
doing that than what I was doing before I found out about the New
Thing.
You know, so yeah, once I went the
first time I was hooked.
And do you remember that first
time walking in.
Well, yeah, but the first time
walking in it was in this building right here.
And we were introduced to everybody and as a kid I was
pretty shy so you know I I remember being introduced and not
really say much but saying hi stuff like that and Betty showed
us all the different programs that they had us had to offer there.
And we became involved in just about all of them.
The arts class, the photography class, the film development
classes.
But the main one was the drum
classes and the African dancing drum class.
That's what consumed most of my time once I really became
involved.
But we still had to go to all the
other classes.
But yeah, when I came, I was like,
yeah, this is cool.
You know?
Yeah.
Was that similar?
Yeah, very similar.
And I had heard about Topper,
Topper Carrew, you know, and of course, him and he and Betty, they
were interracial couple.
And that was kind of taboo, New
going on.
I mean, it wasn't really taboo,
but, you know, they were, well, they cohabitated together and
everything.
And they were like a power couple,
I think.
I always looked at them as the
power couple.
And they lived right around the
corner from us.
But that was before we moved to
1802.
We were at 1910 Riggs Place. 1810
Riggs Place.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So and and so Betty adopted us as
you know because she Betty and my sister Pam, who also was a part of
the New Thing, my older sister, she's a year, her is a year
younger than me, and she's a year older than me.
So we were like stair-steps.
And Betty, Betty adopted her.
And she became our mother outside of, you know, our immediate
mother, because my mother was going through, at the time she was
going through alcohol addiction.
And, you know, she and my father.
And so we sort of rambled the neighborhood, rambled the
neighborhood a lot as kids.
We always get in trouble.
And Betty saw that and she immediately got us.
That's what the New Thing was really about for kids like us.
And she got us and that's, it's history from there.
It's history from there.
So I came up here and I
immediately got involved in everything because the New Thing
was such that you could come here and you could take, for three
hours, you could take drums.
You can go next two hours for the
next workshop.
You could go do graphic arts.
I mean, you can go do dancing if the schedule, you know, the
schedule class for dancing was after this and you could make it
there on time, you could do several things.
On a daily basis to keep you so busy, you would never have to.
By the time the day was over, you just go home, you'd be so tired,
you go to sleep.
Cause you, they fed us here.
I mean, I mean, every day.
Yes.
I ate at McDonald's almost every day.
And because we used to have the little cards and Topper used to
give us them.
Topper, Betty, all the staff would
keep some of those, stack them to give them out to us.
So we could go run right up to McDonald's.
This same McDonald's been here for many years.
We could just take them, go up the street and they'll feed us.
We get the car, get whatever we wanted.
And so this was this was our life.
That's that's something that I'll
never forget with Topper and Betty.
What they were doing they affected the whole neighborhood in a very
positive way.
Yes, they did.
The New Thing...
All the children in the
neighborhood, Betty made it her business, Topper made it his
business to know them.
Yeah.
To bring them to the New thing.
And I am so grateful for it.
All type of events.
It kept me from being somewhere
else, you know? Kept me out of trouble.
And it was proven, the workshops proved themselves.
Because there were always exhibits, always concerts,
performances.
We would travel around the
country.
Things that we never did as a kid.
We never would have had the opportunity.
The same things that are needed now, because there's nothing new
under the sun.
And what goes around comes around.
And it's coming back around.
We know about the epidemic, the
drug epidemic now, the fentanyl stuff.
See, the New Thing, a lot of that, it would have combated a lot of
that.
It wouldn't be, I don't believe it
would be as deep and as big of a problem as it is if they still had
the programs like that, like the New Thing and Ontario Lakers, and
for whatever reason, we don't have those things now.
I mean... I want to ask you real quick about what drew you to the
drumming? Why did you both get drawn to that
of all? I mean, you went to many of the
workshops, you said, but you said that was the one.
Well, well, me, I have to be honest, they had some pretty good
dancers.
I used to love to see the sisters
dance.
I mean, they could really dance.
Matter of fact, they did one show at the cathedral.
And Linda, Eric Robart's fiancee, was one of the dancers.
I'll never forget this, because everybody teased me.
I mean, even though I was a kid, everybody teased me for many years
about that.
And Linda, they did a dance where
the women would come out.
The dancers, female dancers would
come out and challenge the drummers.
They would dance and the drummers would.
And Linda was was dancing.
And they did a thing where she
would turn around and shake.
They had the grass skirts on.
And I was just so captivated.
I stopped playing like and this
was all, this ended up on national tv.
We talked about that for years.
Yeah I mean it was just crazy.
I was And I was like 10, 11 years old.
But that's really what drew me to the new thing, because I always
wanted to be a part of something, like a group or a band or
something like that.
Cause it was also the era of, it
was like Earth, Wind & Fire, all the big bands that Commodores and
all.
Well, Skip came along later and
things like that I wanted to be a part of.
And that was my way of being a part of something big and
professional.
Because we were very professional.
It was like I said earlier, it was perfection.
They demanded your best perfection.
It gave me a lot of discipline...
Yeah ...to be apart of that.
For me, it's real simple.
That's when I found out how much I
love music.
You know, when I went in there and
I seen the dancing and the drumming, I was like, I got to do
that.
It was just the act of what was
going on in there at that time.
And yeah, it sold me right then
and there.
I was like, oh yeah, I love, I'm
gonna do this.
And I mean, I can say I didn't
miss many of rehearsals.
You know, that's how bought in I
was, you know, and I've been doing it ever since.
Yeah, I mean, there was a period in my life where there was a break
in between, but I never, I never, never let go of what I learned.
I've always had in the back of my mind that I'm going to play drums
somewhere in the future.
And that's what I do now.
That's exactly what I do now.
Yes.
Could you tell me a bit about Melvin Deal and his role with the
drummers and dancers? Yeah, well, Melvin, Melvin's an
amazing guy.
Yeah.
I mean, amazing all around person, amazing dancer.
Awesome dancer.
Yes, amazing father figure.
Sometimes Melvin could act like your mother figure.
Make, I mean, you know, the things you need to know as a child,
Melvin would sit you down and he had a little, or where he had a
little, he always kept his little stick when he danced.
And he would sit you down and point that stick at you.
And you just grew to love him.
To, sometimes you might hate him
for a minute because you want to have your way.
But he just had a way with people, especially with young people.
And Melvin could make you feel like somebody, you know, that you
could be whatever you wanted to be.
You just had to put the work in.
And I'll tell you, if you ever saw
the complete program of the African Heritage Dancers and
Drummers, you would see, we were totally professional.
It was one of, we were one of a kind, which is probably why it
afforded us the opportunity to travel around the country.
I remember traveling to most of the universities in the United
States as a part of their cultural program.
Yeah.
When they presented, you know, how
each college would have a period where they would invite different
cultural activities and stuff, they would always invite the
African Heritage Dancers and Drummers to come.
And Melvin, he was sold on making us be the best we could be.
Cause he said we represent him.
And, and cause I think Melvin was,
was working at Howard University at the time or doing workshops or
going to Howard or something like that.
I knew he was associated with Howard and Topper recruited, I get
pretty sure Topper went and hand-picked him for that and you
know He didn't make a mistake that's for sure.
No. Topper had a way of hand-picking and persuading the
best to come to the New Thing.
I don't know how he did it.
I want to learn that because I want to do something similar.
I'll be a part of it because it's time again, I believe.
So tell me, tell me about that, about what something like the New
Thing would be like today or how would it, how do you envision
something like that working? Well, me?
Yeah.
Well, Thanks to the Humanities
Truck, the vision I have would be maybe in the beginning, have
different trucks.
Each truck represent a workshop.
That way it could be mobile and we could take it into different parts
of the city where things like those are needed the most.
Could pack it up, go, finish for the day and pack up and leave and
go back.
And we could do that and until we
could get something permanent and we will already have the
participants handpicked who's gonna come.
And we could, I mean, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of
duplication.
If it worked once, it'll work
again.
But this time, we would put
emphasis on drugs, gun violence, education.
Some of the similar things as the New Thing.
Cause New Thing covered everything.
Topper had a very unique vision.
Which is why it worked.
I mean if it worked once it'll work again.
That's my theory.
The blueprint has already been
made.
Yeah.
It's just maybe a little enhancing to it.
Well, you have to tinker it a little bit.
Days, time, the time, you know, different time of the years.
But yeah, it's the same blueprint.
I mean...
Similar, yeah, we would have to change it.
Even made to work better.
Exactly.
It's different.
Cause the issues basically the
same, but you have more pressing issues now, I think.
Especially the drug addiction and the young people, but the younger
people, you got young ladies, females, young males, they're
caught up in something, they have no idea, you know, what's hitting
them.
And you can't, you can't rehab
your way out of, because rehab, just the foundation.
I mean, because they doing now in 30 days they're attempting to do
what they used to do...
In two years.
Or a year they're trying to say that it really don't take that
much time, but we know it's all about the money.
But what I believe is that type of negligence because of the money
part is a misstep for this community, this country, this
city.
This city, because no amount of
money in the world should, you can't put a value on the life of
those who could and should be the future.
A lot of these kids gonna be running the future, or gonna be
representing the past, but a lot of them don't make it.
They're dying on the street.
Their blood's flowing on the
street because they don't know.
They haven't had the foundation.
They haven't had the opportunity.
They don't know why.
So the education has to start somewhere.
And the schools don't teach that.
The schools, you know, there's
only one school that could get close to what Topper and them were
doing at the New Thing.
That might be Duke Ellington, but
there's some issues at Duke Ellington because of the type of
school it is, they can't address them issues.
We need to fight for our young people because information-wise
they've been misled when it comes to drugs.
So yeah we need to, if necessary, get out there and educate them on
what the consequences of using drugs are.
I'm sure if they knew what they would have to go through far as
being addicted to drugs and trying to stop using drugs, they
wouldn't.
Information is the key.
I guess that's what I'm trying to say.
Being, for them to be informed would maybe would sway their
decisions to do that.
Is there anything I didn't ask you
about the New Thing that you would like to tell us about?
No, it will, I believe something similar will be back.
Maybe it'll be called the New New Thing or something.
We don't know.
Right.
The reemergence or something, anything.
But that's about it.
That's all.
I was actually saying what I was going to say.
Excellent.
All right thank you both for your
time I appreciate it.

Description: Interview with Perry and Vernon Suggs, conducted by Dan Kerr at Adams Morgan Day on September 10, 2023 about their involvement in the New Thing

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Adams Morgan Day 2023

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Title: Perry and Vernon Suggs Interview, Adams Morgan Day, September 10, 2023
Creator(s): Suggs, Perry ; Suggs, Vernon ; Kerr, Dan
Interviewee: Suggs, Perry ; Suggs, Vernon
Interviewer: Kerr, Dan
Created: September 10, 2023
Continent: North and Central America
Country: United States
First Order Political Division: District of Columbia
City: Washington
Neighborhood: Adams Morgan
Rights Statement: Copyright for this object is held by American University and does not preclude any use the co-interviewee(s) may want to make of the information in the recordings themselves. This object is made available through the American University Digital Research Archive for research and educational purposes. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the object beyond the bounds of Fair Use must be obtained from the American University Library -- Archives and Special Collections.

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