Bipeds of Brookland: Rick Edwards

Posted by Abbott Klar Real Estate on Friday, October 14th, 2016 at 3:53pm

Bipeds of Brookland: Rick Edwards
Rick Edwards

Rick Edwards moved into Brookland in 1950 when he was four years old. His mother purchased a house in what was then a primarily white neighborhood.  Many houses at that time had racial covenants written into the contracts that Rick recalls, “Prohibited sale or rent to people of African blood or Jewish faith. Those racial covenants were binding until the Civil Rights era.  But you can still read them in many of the old deeds.” Rick says his mother had very light skin and “They didn’t know she was black until I came.  It was completely white when we moved in, the area I was aware of.  Many of the whites were antagonistic but many weren’t.  Murray and Paul had a delicatessen.  I remember parking my bicycle and going in for a root beer float. They had no problem with me sitting in there.”

Rick recalls that the neighborhood changed while he was a kid. “By the time I was 8 or 9 there was only one white resident left on the block.” His earliest memories are of riding his bike all around the neighborhood. “At that time, the monastery didn’t have a fence and brown rabbits were very abundant, rabbits were everywhere. It was very pleasant neighborhood, very quiet.  Bird life was everywhere and it was very clean.”

Rick was a carpenter, a trade he learned as a kid helping with his mother’s rental properties.  “Her policy was anyone doing work for her had to take me. I would sweep the floor or get tools, do whatever I was told, and at the same time I was learning these trades like an old time apprenticeship. So I was 6 when I began. I remember the first job was mixing glue for wallpaper.  My skill grew and by the time I was 14, I did a complete bathroom floor replacement, and it looked like a 14 year old did it -- but it lasted.”

“I’m third generation Washingtonian.  My grandmother came here when slavery was abolished before the general emancipation. The District outlawed slavery before the general emancipation.” He reflects, “I think I’m blessed to live the way I live.  Stress free, debt free, and my health is pretty good.” He renovated the house his mother bought when she was 92 years old and cared for her until she died at age 104.

 

"I can say growing up it was quite normal for everyone to speak to one another and people would sit on their porch and somebody driving down, you wave that’s just the way the culture was here in Brookland.” Rick hopes that new residents will continue the tradition of  always talking to their neighbors on the street  as it “promotes a community cohesion.”

Bipeds of Brookland: A weekly series introducing the people who make Brookland their home, one step at a time.  
Article and photo by Tom Sabella.

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