By the early 1970s, Black residents comprised nearly 73% of Washington, D.C.’s population, making it one of the most prominent majority Black cities in America.  As a testament to that identity, residents in D.C. nicknamed it “Chocolate City.”

Chocolate City was a rare urban space in the 1970s where Black-owned businesses thrived, go-go music dominated the radio stations, and Black people held genuine political power. Standing at the intellectual heart of this world was Howard University, the nation's most prominent HBCU, which featured as a crown jewel of Black academic and cultural life training generations of lawyers, physicians, artists, and activists who shaped the city and the broader African diaspora.

On this episode of On the Yard, MSRC Director Dr. Benjamin Talton sits down with Sonja Woods, university historian at MSRC, Howard alum Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, and Dr. George Derek Musgrove, associate professor of history at the University of Maryland and co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital.

The discussion covers the cultural touchstones that built Chocolate City and the figures who were transformative to D.C., cementing it as not just a political capital, but as a capital of Black intellectual life. They also discuss Howard University’s place in the city as a gathering ground for some of the most consequential Black thinkers, writers and scholars in the world.

Episode Guide:

00:00 Chocolate City Origins & Guest Introduction

03:34 Defining Chocolate City

05:12 Democracy Returns

08:45 The Art, Music, and Culture of Chocolate City

16:31 Howard University Shapes the City

18:13 Black Flight Tipping Point

22:15 Remaking Howard in 1968

26:28 Three-Year Campus Struggle

28:53 President James E. Cheek’s Howard Legacy

34:45 Working Beyond Political Party Lines

37:45 Reagan Visit and 1983 Protests

42:37 Jesse Jackson and D.C. Statehood

45:22 Final Reflections and Wrap

On the Yard is a production of The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and is produced by University FM.

The triple threat of Chocolate City
10:22 [Dr. George Derek Musgrove]: It's just an exciting place to be Black. So, it's those three things. It's all of these people, the fact that they're beginning to vote for themselves and put together this really remarkably robust Black Power government, and they're just producing all this artwork. And I'll just add, to put a cherry on top, that Parliament, when it came out with "Chocolate City" in 1975, you know, is really acknowledging all of this. It's saying, look, this is the city where we have the biggest crowds. We do three or four shows a year, and they're all packed and sold out.

Blackness on everyday frequency
13:41 [Abdur-Rahman Muhammad]: When I stepped foot in Washington, D.C. I first came here on a high school trip, I believe it was '78, and '79 is when I actually visited the campus for the first time, and to say it was a culture shock is an absolute understatement. All of these radio stations, no matter where you flip the dial, Black music came out. You turn on the television, the news anchors are Black, the weather person is Black. You're hearing Black music everywhere, Black bookstores, Black little coffee shops.

A global vision for the Mecca
40:05 [Abdur-Rahman Muhammad]: He saw [James Cheek] Howard University as a great institution that could compete with the greatest institutions of the world, and he had a huge vision. His dedication to equity and healthcare, and the medical school and the hospital, he fought great battles, you know, to inaugurate those programs, the Sickle Cell Center, and what have you. He loved Black people. He loved his community, but he didn't tolerate nonsense either.

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