This special course, offered in spring 2021, was part of a project in partnership with Historic Chevy Chase D.C., and funded by HumanitiesDC. Students studied the history of how the city has used eminent domain to seize land owned by Black people. And they conducted oral histories with descendants of Black families whose land was taken by the city — in order to put together recommendations for how this history should be reckoned with today.

Pictured: my students with Pointer family descendants at the newly renamed Lafayette-Pointer Park, which was built on land confiscated from descendants of the Pointer family by the city in 1928.