Shaw's `Throwaway People'
Producer Sherry Jones' hour-long look at the District's 120-block Shaw neighborhood is a view of a once-proud community so mired in drugs and unemployment that it seems to have no way out. Called "Throwaway People," the "Frontline" film airs Tuesday at 9 on 26 and 22/67. Roger Wilkins reports.</br></br>Only 12 blocks from the money and power of downtown Washington, Shaw is bordered by North Capitol Street, 15th Street NW, M Street and Florida Avenue. Years ago, Shaw was the home of Duke Ellington, black educators and lawyers and champions of women's rights.</br></br>But after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, parts of Shaw were burned in the backlash of rioting. Since then, Shaw has fallen on hard, even mean, times. Its people gained little from the civil rights advances of that decade. Its middle class moved out, jobs grew scarce, and the insidious drug trade undermined conventional work and destroyed families.</br></br>Now Shaw is home to a black underclass comprised of high-school dropouts, the jobless, single mothers trying to keep their children off the streets, addicts, crack dealers and their cadre.</br></br>In a metropolitan area where the average family earns more than $50,000 annually, infant mortality in Shaw is three times higher than anywhere else in the industrialized world, says Wilkins.