Tales from the attic: Marion Barry and me

 Sam Smith - In1966 DC Transit wanted to raise its fares and the local chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had organized to stop it. They urged citizens with cars to drive bus passengers during a one-day boycott. I joined the volunteers. At the delicatessen at Twenty-fourth and Benning, one of the assembly points, …

Some days in the 1960s

Sam Smith - My circulation staff for the Capitol East Gazette in the 1960s, our office just eight blocks from the Capital, came from the neighborhood -- when they weren't in jail. At one point, about half of them were. I found needles behind stacks of papers in the office, had a few checks stolen …

Bits from the past: Living east of the Capitol in the 1960s

Sam Smith - In my 1960s neighborhood east of the US Capitol, the Age of Aquarius often looked more like a war zone. Many of the people there were not part of a counter-culture but of an abandoned culture. Even the jukebox at the Stanton Grill -- purveyors of Greek and American food to white …

A different kind of cop story

Sam Smith This is the first in an Undernews series on improving policing so we can have fewer disasters like the recent one in Minneapolis. The reaction to the murder there, as is typically true, was one of anger and condemnation. But the solutions get rarely discussed. Your editor has been involved with this issue …

Learning Vietnam

Sam Smith I am more tolerant of Ken Burns’ Vietnam series than some because I lived through that period with some of the same confusion the TV series recounts. Shortly before I left the Coast Guard in June 1964, the cutter Spar's crewmembers were presented the Defense Service ribbon in delayed recognition of the fact …

DC in the 1970s

From "Multitudes: An Unauthorized Memoir"by Sam Smith AUTHOR IN APPALLING 1970s WEAR, SPEAKING AT A PARTY FOR HIS BOOK, "CAPTIVE CAPITAL," AT THE AFRICAN MUSEUM. JULIUS HOBSON AND JO BUTLER AT LEFT; GWEN REISS, MUSEUM DIRECTOR WARREN ROBBINS AND BOB BERG AT RIGHT. Moving into the 70s Memory can fool us. Up close the 1960s …

The sit ins begin

Sam Smith - 55 years ago this month I covered sit ins in Arlington Va for WWDC News. In February 1960, four black college students had sat down at a white-only Woolworths lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. Within two weeks, there were sit-ins in fifteen cities in five southern states and within two months they …

April 1968

Sam Smith - On the evening of April 4, 1968, this 30 year old was up on T Street with a group of anti-freeway protesters picketing the DC mayor's house, when word came of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death. We went home as the police cars poured by filled with shotgun-armed and helmeted cops. The …

Selma

Sam Smith When I finally went to see Selma, I was reminded of the American Indian who said of his tale, “Some of the facts may be wrong, but the story is true.” Certainly the depiction of the Selma march and the abuses by white Alabama officials that led up to it more than justifies …

My JFK moments

Sam Smith In the summer of 1957, I covered a Senate investigation of the Teamsters Union. Among those seated at the long panel table was young John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts. His brother, Robert, served as a counsel for the committee. At one point, a prostitute witness made some off-color comment that brought guffaws from …

THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF SNCC: SOME MEMORIES

SAM SMITH, MULTITUDES - There was another story that wound its way across the pages of The Idler. . .  It was first expressed in a moving fashion in letters written from Mississippi in the summer of 1964 by my college roommate, ex-wrestler and ex-paratrooper Gren Whitman. From Biloxi on August 8 he wrote: |||| …

Seeds

Sam Smith Shortly before I left the Coast Guard, the Spar's crewmembers were presented the Defense Service ribbon in delayed recognition of the fact that at some point whatever had been going on in Vietnam had turned into a war. We were now officially -- although the actual phrase had yet to be born -- …

Moving into the ’70s in Washington

AUTHOR IN APPALLING 1970s WEAR, SPEAKING AT A PARTY FOR HIS BOOK, "CAPTIVE CAPITAL," AT THE AFRICAN MUSEUM. JULIUS HOBSON AND JO BUTLER AT LEFT; GWEN REISS, MUSEUM DIRECTOR WARREN ROBBINS AND BOB BERG AT RIGHT. Sam Smith, 1970 - Memory can fool us. Up close the 1960s often lacked the romance that time has …

The day the buses ran empty

Sam Smith, 1966 - Monday January 24th, was the day that Washington thumbed it nose at 0. Roy Chalk. There is a long list of grievances against Mr. Chalk a Washingtonian could compile, but it is enough here to mention that Mr. Chalk is head of the D. C. Transit System and that Mr. Chalk, …