Bipeds of Brookland: Jean Little

Bipeds of Brookland: Jean Little

Jean Little  came to DC from a small town in North Carolina. She was recruited to study at the Cortez Peters Business School. Cortez Peters was an African American man who taught himself to type as a child and became a champion typist. He founded the school to prepare African Americans for business and civil service. “It was a very good business school. From there I started working for the government at the Labor Department. I was a statistical assistant. I started out as a secretary but I moved up. I did well, I think, in that day.”  

She first lived near Eastern High School and married Mr. Little whom she knew in North Carolina. They moved to Brookland in 1965 and raised a son and a daughter in the neighborhood. “It was quiet. When my nieces and nephews came from NY, they said, ‘Oh, this is the country.’”

Jean’s children went to Bunker Hill Elementary School across the street from their home. She remembers them playing in the fields in front of Howard Divinity School. “This was an excellent area. It was just like one big family; we were always doing things together and doing things for the kids… vacations and picnics and bonfires in the churchyard.”  Jean enjoyed the close-knit community she had with families on her block, many of whom attended the same church on Michigan Avenue just behind her house. “That was my church.” Reid Temple AME is now in Glendale, MD, about 14 miles from her home. “It grew out of the small church and now has 18, 000 members.

Jean retired after 34 years at the Labor Department, however, “I'm just as busy as I was, with church, and I volunteer to feed the homeless every other month. I’m on two choirs at church.” Jean and her husband still have family in NC, “We go there quite often.” But she misses many of her friends in Brookland who have passed away.

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.