“Every Last One Was a Mother to Me”: Four DC Women Live a Century of Friendship

from the Washington Post:

…In Southwest Washington, people tended to live out their days in the neighborhood, and the women never imagined that their friendship would outlast its stoops and storefronts. But in the 1950s, the area was marked for urban renewal and razed, decimating the community.

Nearly everything was demolished, including Zion Baptist, whose building on F Street SW was replaced by a segment of the 395 freeway. Barnes’s church, Mount Moriah Baptist, also had to move. Their congregations scattered. Neighbors lost touch, and many found it impossible to re-create the old sense of closeness.

But from new homes in Northeast and Northwest Washington, the four women’s friendship persisted. They saw each other become grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and “great-greats.” They can still send each other into hysterics. And they share memories of places and people no one else remembers.

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