Day: September 19, 2007

Book drive

Too many books taking up too much room at home?

This week you can do something about it—and help benefit local kids in need!

First Book, a nonprofit organization, has teamed up with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, SunTrust Bank and SunTrust Mortgage to host a book drive in Washington , DC up through this Sunday, September 23rd. The drive will enable First Book to achieve its mission of providing children in low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. Social venture company Better World Books will sell the books online and First Book will use the proceeds to bring thousands of new books to children in need in the DC community.

Between now and this Sunday, September 23rd, you can drop off your used books at DC SunTrust locations, or, if you don’t live in the area, donate them by following the instructions on our webpage: www.firstbook.org/betterworld. This site also provides guidelines on which kinds of books are most helpful.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Erin

Erin Tyler
Campus Advisory Board Manager
First Book
1319 F Street, NW
Suite 1000
Washington DC, 20004
Phone: 866-393-1222, ext. 109
Fax: 202-628-1258
etyler AT firstbook.org
IM: ErinatFB
www.firstbook.org

Slummy history: 1944

In my occasion search to find the earliest time the neighborhood was started to be called by it’s school border’s name, Shaw, I find stuff. So in the March 11, 1944 issue of the Washington Post, an article titled “Alley Dwellers in Slum Areas Sordid, Senate Group Hears.” It begins, “sordid conditions in the slum area in the heart of Washington– streets on which it was decent women feared for their safety and ‘real men’ avoided to escape prostitutes…” The Thomas C.R. Gray the then president of the East Central Civic Association, which claimed its borders as 3rd St NE, FL Ave, 7th St NW, and Mass Ave, testified to the deplorable housing conditions of alley houses with no heat, no indoor plumbing, no bathtubs, no electricity, and infested with vermin.
Along with poor housing, there was crime. Prostitutes on Pierce St, in Glicks Alley & on Fenton Ct, and some sort of dangerous condition (not really stated clearly in the article) along the east side of 7th St between L & O Sts.