First Class

by Alison Stewart

  He is very clear that the track team is not a social club, and anybody who signs up has to pass a series of first-time challenges. There are no excuses. It is a rule that if it is below forty degrees, high school athletes can’t practice outside. No problem—Coach Parker has the girls train the school parking garage. The team’s success started to attract students who might have fallen through the cracks. One day a girl named Samantha approached him in the hall. She wanted to be on the team.

  “I heard this girl’s a fighter. Off the chain. ‘Do I want this kid on my team?’ I have some crazy kids, but do I need to add another one? OK. I’ll be cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, I’ll bring her in. And this kid had a work ethic that was unbelievable, also with a God-given talent. God blessed her with genetics.”

  Marvin Parker, Dunbar girls’ track coach and dean of students.

  Getty Images

  Watching these athletes run or jump or sprint leaves you wondering how the human body is capable of such feats. They are all muscle and grace. Yes, they are young and in shape, but the intensity and focus on the girls’ faces is as mesmerizing as their speed and agility. Teenage girls with focus like that should be good students too. And they have to be if they want to be on Parker’s team, despite Dunbar’s academic reputation.

  “After being around these girls, they are intelligent young ladies. But the reputation of DC schools is that these kids were plumb dumb and had no clue. I just walked in this building and found out it was just not the case. Some of the girls—straight brilliant.” When he did start asking why some of the students weren’t trying, the answer was both trite and true. “I asked them, and they said it was peer pressure. They were trying to keep a false image. ‘I’m Saratoga…. I’m from Seventh and O,’ ” he says, putting on the voice of a teenager trying to act hard. “I broke it down to them how stupid it was. Nobody owns nothin’ in DC! The federal government owns everything in DC. You are representing neighborhoods and projects that care nothing about you.”

  He hadn’t realized the depth of the girls’ inspirational deprivation until he started taking them on the tours of colleges where they had track meets.

  “When we went to Virginia Tech I met with the director of preengineering. He took the girls all around, went in the dorm rooms. You should have seen their faces. I could have just cried.” The girls had no idea life could be like that.

  Coach Parker brings speakers, frat brothers, and recent college graduates to the school to talk to his students. “I never have to win another championship, but my girls have got to go to college.” His demeanor changes when he thinks about the bigger picture. He is very, very serious about the way he believes adults should talk to kids. “We need to start telling the truth about these things. You want to break the cycle, break the chains, break the cycle of having babies, staying in DC, going on Section 8, never leaving the ‘hood.” He stresses that they are ladies. When he realized that some of the girls were uncomfortable in the tight running shorts and were receiving unwanted attention, he helped design a more modest running skort for the girls.

  He can point to every girl in a recent team photo and name where she is in college. Morgan State. Coppin. The good reputation of his team has helped him recruit talented runners to come to Dunbar, which until recently wasn’t easy. Parents did not want to send their kids into that building, and they weren’t too keen on the academic statistics coming out of the school.

  One student who took the leap was Angela Bonham. Bonham had been attending a progressive high school in the District that had a 100 percent graduation rate and a 100 percent college acceptance but a small track program. Bonham is a natural athlete. She is fast. She’s a golfer and a gifted math whiz. She was also extremely shy. Coach Parker promised Angela and her family that she would get a good education and be part of a championship track team if she came to Dunbar. By her senior year Angela had seventeen individual city titles in cross-country, indoor, and outdoor track, and she earned a four-year academic scholarship to George Washington University.

  In a few minutes of her spare time, heading home from a campus job and wearing a flowing floral skirt and ballet flats, she looks tiny sitting on a bench in Union Station. “Dunbar isn’t as bad as people make it seem, OK? There are some bright kids that come out of Dunbar. And if you keep them interested, then they will do what they have to.”

  Her first impressions of Dunbar were not bad, but she remembers that it was confusing. “The rules were really relaxed before I got there. ’Cause I got there, and I saw half the kids wearing school uniforms. And, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be wearing a uniform or not, because I figured like, everybody’s wearing the same thing—what’s going on? And nobody told me about anything.”

  She arrived during the school’s first year of restructuring and was placed in the rigorous pre-engineering program. “There were problems with the kids. They did whatever they wanted to do. Walk the halls and anything they wanted to do. So they had us in, like, a section in the school. And when Bedford came they kind of integrated us more. So, we were with the chaos, but it wasn’t as much chaos because they had controlled a lot of the mess.”

  She never regretted coming to Dunbar, though. “It’s good to know that I came out of a school with great history, because I could be the next person, you know?” The track team helped her come out of her shell and even become a bit of a team jokester, masterminding one specific trick involving Twizzlers that is now an inside joke. She really admires Coach Parker for all he did for the team. She says, “When I started at Dunbar, I knew no one and was just another athlete that transferred to be on a better team; however, when it was time to leave, it felt like I was leaving my family.”

  Coach Parker is not just a coach at Dunbar; since 2009, he has also been the dean of students. He was invited in by George Leonard and Friends of Bedford, who told him they liked what he was doing with the track team and asked if he could spread a little of that magic around the school at large.

  Parker gave what was probably the most sober and fair assessment of what went right and what wrong with the Friends of Bedford’s short tenure. “I liked the Friends of Bedford. I think the FOB had the right idea and didn’t execute the plan properly. But this is not New York. I sat in the meetings, and they were taken aback with the kind of kids [at Dunbar]. You can’t come in here and think you are just going to talk to those kids—you got to get in their face with the authority of a drill sergeant but the love of a father. Their plan wasn’t translating. They didn’t understand it was a political town. They would have worked if they had listened. But they were really full of themselves, so they didn’t listen. I liked them. I appreciated what they wanted to do. I could see that [Leonard] was pushing the school in the right direction, but you were making promises you couldn’t keep. And you can’t do that in DC.”

  Parker has continued to work at the school and is very happy that Stephen Jackson is back as principal. “Mr. Jackson believes in surrounding youself with folks who are about getting the job done.”

  In getting the job done, Parker has had his own political run-ins. When he first got to Dunbar, he made a lot of noise about the inequity in funds for girls sports. He says Title IX was not in effect. “It was all football, football, football, football. Nothing against the football team, but come on! You know?” And he has been questioned repeatedly about driving the girls to the school for practice.

  He and Principal Jackson are working every rule in the book to make sure the school is full of children who want to be there. He knows how many infractions can lead to transfer. He resents what he calls the charter schools dumping problem kids back into the DCPS school system. He recalls one young man who had transferred into the school with straight Fs, who wouldn’t leave the hallway. The young man had no interest in class. He wanted to do what he wanted to do. Parker asked him to move along to class.

  “Fuck you,” he said—and then tried to run away from the track coach.

  “Let me hip you to something,
young man. Who you think you foolin’? I am going to call your mother.”

  “You can call my mom.”

  The mother was shocked when Parker told her the kid was suspended. “You are going to suspend him for being in an unauthorized area? He can’t get in-school suspension?”

  “No. No. Your son has straight Fs. Your son has not been to a class. I am sending him to you. This is not a babysitting service. It’s not. This is a house of learning.”

  The Future

  As you exit the school, it is impossible not to see the new construction of Dunbar III. Parker and Jackson are thrilled about the facility. He goes to the architectural update meetings to ensure that the athletics program will be represented. And in a move that may seem like karma, Dunbar II will be demolished to make way for the new sports complex. A shiny new school will certainly sweeten his recruiting pitch.

  Parker favors old soul music when he drives, and his satellite radio station of choice has the O’Jays in heavy rotation. “That’s real music,” he says. Driving away from Dunbar and toward the convention center, the gentrification in the area near Dunbar is obvious. Young blonde women in Lululemon yoga pants are walking their Labradors, and Kohler bathroom fixture boxes sit on the curbs. Coach Parker has a realization about his team as he turns the corner, “Yeah, I guess sometime soon I may have my first Caucasian runner.”

  Dunbar is in the 20001 zip code, which by one demographer’s account had the tenth-largest increase in white residents in the whole country over the last decade. In 2000 the white population in the area was 5 percent, and in 2010 it was 32 percent.1 There are a lot of new dog parks, which seems to be the symbol for gentrification.

  Matthew Stuart is one of the few white teachers at Dunbar, which has led to some interesting exchanges. “I mean, most of the time, it’s just funny curiosities [such] as—’Mr. Stuart, how do you get your hair to do that?’ It’s like, ‘Well, that’s—it sometimes curls when it gets longer, naturally.’ So, it’s more like, curiosity and, like, it’s not even about you, but it’s just—if it’s something that’s new they want to know.”

  Matthew Stuart has a few questions of his own when the subject turns to Dunbar and demographics. “Are you going to be able to help the students who are here, whoever they are? And, then, the second question is: What is that group of students going to look like? So, what do you want the school to be?”

  The new school can accommodate eleven hundred students, though there aren’t that many attending Dunbar now. So who will fill this new, sleek school? The old Dunbar model, focusing on college prep, is being used at Banneker High School, which is 85 percent African American, with academic metrics and a graduation rate that mirrors Old Dunbar’s. Dunbar is and will continue to be a general population school.

  It is expected that Dunbar III will take on students from another area high school, the academically struggling Spingarn, which is slated to close. Principal Jackson hopes to recruit all kinds of students to the new state-of-the-art Dunbar High school through advertising. The school recently received a major $300,000 grant, and while most of the money will go to extended-stay programs, Jackson has earmarked close to $25,000 for a marketing campaign about Dunbar’s promise. Radio ads were produced highlighting Dunbar’s historic significance and its athletic dominance. The school has an inviting new website.

  So what will the newest incarnation of Dunbar be? Is this $122 million building for the current population or a potential population down the road—the ones who may live in the expensive new condos that have gone up not far away? The year 2012 marked a milestone for the city: DC became no longer majority African American. The famous U Street corridor, the once elegant and busy black epicenter, was burned out in the riots. It is now trendy restaurants and cupcake shops. Just up the street from the school is a proposed development called City Market at O. The developers are promising six hundred residential units and a hotel, plus thousands of square feet of retail space. And the harbinger of all things upwardly mobile, a Trader Joe’s, is slated to open soon a short distance from Anna J. Cooper Circle.

  A young woman named Olivia moved in behind Dunbar four years ago because she liked the commute to work and the price of real estate. She belongs to a social circle of young multiculti women who have bought their first homes near Dunbar within the past few years. The back of her house looks out on one of the school’s parking lots.

  “That lot has been known to harbor a lot of criminal activity. When I first moved in it was a place where people would dump stolen cars. They would meet to do drug deals.” She would find her driveway blocked by cars when there were basketball games. “It’s not the best view from the back of my house.”

  She was excited when she found a flyer for a community meeting about the new construction. Only a few neighbors showed up. Some people at the meeting were unhappy because they said the school was going to block their afternoon light. Olivia liked what she heard and thinks the new school orientation will help reduce crime. Also, her view is going to improve dramatically, “I’m happy because there will now be a soccer field behind my house.” She was impressed when she heard about Dunbar’s history. She hadn’t known.

  There are more than forty schools in the United States today that are called Dunbar. Most are in African American neighborhoods and have varying degrees of academic success. Dunbar in Baltimore is an academic gem, while Dunbar High School in Chicago was the scene of recent shootings. Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, could make history again and extend its legacy. Given the demographics of the area, given that one in seven new marriages involves partners of different races,2 and given that the founders of Dunbar were originally in favor of integrated schools but did the best they could under awful legal conditions, Dunbar’s new place in history could be as the first truly, organically integrated school in Washington, DC. If that happens, the lessons of Dunbar will have been learned and the legacy of quality education, for all, no matter the color of one’s skin, will continue.

  A lot of things have changed in the five years since Dunbar was forced into restructuring and the new school was conceived. Mayor Vincent Gray was warmly welcomed to his position and then went through a dismal period during which some suggested he should step down. Kaya Henderson continued to follow the policy of evaluating teachers and shedding those who did not make the grade. Rodney Chambers now heads up a music nonprofit. And the Friends of Bedford began the application process for a charter school in DC, only to withdraw the application. They returned to New York, where they are now having success with middle schoolers and have opened a dynamic afterschool program in Brooklyn. Angela Bonham is thriving at GWU. And several of the people interviewed and featured in this book have died: Lawrence Graves, Commander Wesley Brown, Billy Taylor, Elizabeth Catlett, Dr. James Bowman, and Joe and Carol Stewart. And in August of 2013 the new Dunbar High School will open.

  A $122 million facility is exciting for all involved, but external and self-inflicted wounds continue to affect the Dunbar community. On March 13, 2013, just blocks from the new building thirteen people were injured in a drive-by shooting. Dunbar’s principal told the media he was concerned about retaliation violence. And in what the papers dubbed a result of win-at-all-costs, sports-first mentality, the 2012 Crimson Tide football team had its city championship title revoked for allegedly using an ineligible player. As this book went to print Coach Joe could only say an appeal was in the works. A DCPS spokeswoman confirmed the appeal process. She added, “No disciplinary action has been taken on Coach Joe. He remains head coach.”

  Dunbar High School will attempt to rebuild itself day by day with a new building, new teachers, new students, and perhaps even a new culture. Maybe it was a sign of good things to come when last spring on a sunny day, something that sounded like music could be heard in the parking area in front of the school. At the end of a single-file line of students was was a big kid with a big drum strapped to his chest, pounding out a percussive backbeat. There was a small group of musicia
ns, a sax player here and a trumpet player there, marching in line, working out what appeared to be the beginning of a song while working on a formation. Maybe this version of the band wasn’t as flashy or as fierce as the Crimson Tide that marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in 2009, but the Dunbar High School marching band was back.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU TO: WILLIAM and Isaac Wolff, Jane Dystel, Jerome Pohlen, Michelle Schoob, and everyone at Chicago Review Press, James Edwards, Kimberly Springle, Matt Martinez, Eric Nuzum, Kelly Caldwell, Barbara June Carter, Philip Prem Das, James Bruce, Louis Campbell, Tom Sherwood, Lisa Crisp, Mayhugh A. Graham, Pete Stewart, Jon Meacham, Ida Jones, Joellen El Bashir, Richard Jenkins, the Dunbar Alumni Federation, Teddy Gebremichael, and Casey Klein.

  NOTES

  Chapter 2: Teaching to Teach

  1. Constance McLaughlin Green, Secret City: History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Press,1967), 47.

  2. Kate Masur, “Washington’s Black Code,” New York Times, December 7, 2011; “Washington Jail Site, African American Trail,” Cultural Tourism, www.culturaltourismdc.org/things-do-see/washington-jail-site-african-american-heritage-trail.

  3. Green, Secret City, 25.

  4. Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture, The Black Washingtonians: 300 Years of African American History, Anacostia Museum Illustrated Chronology (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons).

  5. Ibid.

  6. Manual of the Board of Trustees of the Public Schools of Washington City (M’Gill and Witherow, 1863), 18.

  7. Report of the Commissioners of The District of Columbia, Volume IV, The Government Printing Office, Washingotn, DC, 1905, 88.

  8. Kimberly Prothro Williams, Schools for All: A History of DC Public School Buildings 1804–1960 (Washington, DC: US Department of Interior, 2008), 1.