Shepherd Park: Activism Working Within Tradition
When some real estate speculators were cashing in on racial fears in the late 1950s, some Shepherd Park residents took the lead in fighting block-busting tactics and tried to make fair housing the rule.</br></br>Recently, when Wendy's proposed putting one of its fast-food outlet in the area's business district, Shepherd Park residents convinced it to think again, and prevailed on the D.C. Council to build a library there instead.</br></br>And after bars with nude dancers began to proliferate on upper Georgia Avenue, Shepherd Park residents pressured the city's liquor board to crack down and helped push through a liquor licensing law that gives voters a say over who sells alcohol. "I think it's fair to say that the Shepherd Park community is one that defends its own rights to live in a safe and culturally enriched environment," said D.C. Council member</br></br>Charlene Drew Jarvis (D-At Large), who lives in the nearby neighborhood of Portal Estates. If Shepherd Park residents occasionally seem to have their dander up, it's because they are protective of their cohesive</br></br>sense of traditional, and some not-so-traditional, values. Behind the facades of brick colonial-style houses, most of which were built before World War II, lives a largely integrated community of some of the city's most highly educated and civically active people. Marriage, family, education, racial equality-these are no mere buzzwords in Shepherd Park. They shape a collective point of view that does not treat lightly intrusions from the outside. "Everyone does what he can to keep the community the way it has been for a number of years," said longtime resident Juanita Thornton.