Death knells for the “Chocolate City” have proliferated in the aftermath of D.C.’s announced population shift and, yet, like countless other historical African American requiems… blackness rarely disappears in toto. Rather, it miraculously “hangs on,” seeps into the cultural mainstream, and perseveres; albeit, in a new, modified form or fashion. And the concept itself is an acknowledgement… of a lifestyle and cultural locus akin to tasting “an unquantifiable richness.” This particular metaphor… reminds us of the more sensuous elements in the District of Columbia’s art portfolio, but in almost every instance it is a fleeting, evanescent sweetness couched in the occasionally boring and often bitter flavors of everyday truths, delivering a euphoria and, then, an aftertaste that speaks to the particular historical circumscriptions which have long defined this place and its striving and continually self-searching black community.
“A Chocolate City Reconsidered,” in Beauty Born of Struggle: The Art of Black Washington, ed., Jeffrey C. Stewart (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 300-345.
