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Washington in the '70s

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Premieres February 22, 2010 at 9 pm
on WETA TV 26 and WETA HD

Flash back to Washington in the 1970s, a decade that began under a cloud of war, riots, and division and ended with a feeling of promise, calm, and relative harmony.

Join WETA for the new one-hour documentary Washington in the '70s, which charts the District's rise from the ashes of the 1968 riots to its emergence as a world-class city, featuring first-hand accounts from those who shaped the events of the time.

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Veteran news journalist Bernard Shaw is the narrator for Washington in the '70s. As a young reporter with CBS News in D.C. during the 1970s, he covered many of the events featured in the program.

This local production is made possible by the generous support of WETA members.

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Marion and Effi Barry on January 2, 1979, after Mr. Barry was sworn in as mayor. (Photo credit: Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post)

Preview: Washington in the '70s

A history of the nation's capital in the '70s, focusing on local issues. Interviewed: former mayor Marion Barry and U.S. representative Walter Fauntroy; Pat Buchanan; Connie Chung and Maury Povich; the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee and Colbert King.

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When to watch on WETA Television »

Photos from the show

Featured songs

The following songs are featured in the show Washington in the '70s. So many great songs to choose from — what do you think of this list?

Discussion guide

This activity guide, designed for all age groups, provides engaging opportunities to explore Washington D.C. history and culture.

Download the guide (58K) »

Bonus clips

We couldn't fit all of the great commentary into the show! Check out the clips below for longer segments from our interviews with Maury Povich, Walter Fauntroy and Donnie Simpson.

 

Please note: To fully enjoy the interactive features of this website, you must have Javascript turned on and Adobe Flash Version 8 or higher installed. Download Flash now »

 

Quotes

“I was born at… the old Providence Hospital on Capitol Hill where my mother was a visiting nurse… We grew up… over in Georgetown when it wasn’t quite the Georgetown of today. It was a very… middle class, Irish neighborhood… and [later] moved to a home out in Northwest… which basically… bordered on farm country.”
— Pat Buchanan
“Everybody in my family could sing or play something… So it rubbed off on me… I’ve always been musically inclined and always been surrounded by music… Music has always been a part of me, regardless of where I went or what I did, always had that music in the back of my mind.”
— Chuck Brown
“Money brought me to DC. When I was in Detroit on radio I was making $13,500 a year. They offered me $28,500 to move here -- I said I’m gonna be rich! I thought I was making so much money, I didn’t think to factor in the cost of living which was about three times what Detroit was and I was flat broke at the end of the day.”
— Donnie Simpson
“I spent my early childhood in the District… We ended up moving to Northern Virginia later in the ‘50s because my mother was convinced I was gonna be crushed by a D.C. transit bus… Our house was on the corner and the bus stops back then were these steel pipes that came out of the ground with a little circular sign at the top. And I used to go out there and grab that pipe and swing into oncoming traffic. So she thought that we were gonna be better off in the burbs.”
— Phil Wood
“I arrived in Washington in January of 1962…. and after walking around the city a few hours, I thought this is a pretty great city. I loved the light, and there seemed to be an air of, you know, potential here, possibility. And even though Washington in 1962 was a lot different than Washington now, I decided that I was gonna stay here.”
— Lou Stovall
“During the Eisenhower years, everything was calm. We walked to school on the sidewalks, it was safe. And we roller skated… and we played in the alley… And the only thing that scared us was the iceman who would come rolling down the alley or the man who sharpened knives, cause we could hear the [buzz sound] and it would scare the heck out of us.”
— Connie Chung
“I am a native, and I don’t usually like to say this, but it’s a little pompous, I’m a sixth generation Washingtonian. The first relative of the family came here in 1805 to be… the major domo to Dolly Madison… And they always tell the story that when the British were coming to burn the White House, they were trying to get the Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington off the wall, but it was screwed to the wall. So they asked him, and he was called French John, and he pulled out his pocketknife, and he cut it out of the frame, rolled it up, and that’s why it was saved.”
— Arthur Cotton Moore
“I was born at George Washington Hospital. We lived... across the District line in Silver Spring, Maryland in a little apartment complex called the Falkland Apartments at Colesville Road and East West Highway…. I went through college at the University of Pennsylvania and came home and got married…and lived in the Maryland suburbs, first at Wheaton and then in Rockville.”
— Maury Povich
“I was born at Freedman’s Hospital in Washington, DC. Freedman’s Hospital was one of the very first hospitals available to slaves after they were freed. My father was the chief of surgery there… and we lived on the campus, at Howard University, as children.”
— Charlene Drew Jarvis
“I was born in the District of Columbia. I wasn’t born on a farm, so I don’t know very much about chickens and ducks. I wasn’t born in Detroit, so I don’t know how to make cars. I wasn’t born in West Virginia, so I don’t know anything about mining. I was born in the District of Columbia where from the earliest of my waking moments, my curiosity was about a building downtown called the White House, and another cross-town called the Capitol.”
— Rev. Walter Fauntroy
“I…came here to DC to go to American University with my girlfriend. My girlfriend lasted two semesters, I lasted four years and got a gig… on WHFS radio when I was a sophomore… So I stayed in Washington and here we are.”
— Cerphe Colwell
“Usually people say to me ‘Did you follow a man or a job here?’ and I say ‘Well, actually, neither. I left both in Texas and came to Washington because I thought it was so magnificent.’…The trees, the water, the architecture, just everything about it…. I fell in love with the city.”
— Carol Schwartz
“I’m a native Washingtonian. Went to Jackson Elementary School where there were four teachers for 160 kids. Two of them were maiden sisters. And everybody knew them as the fat Ms. Waddey and the thin Ms. Waddey. It was very much of a segregated town. Although as a young boy, I wasn’t particular aware of that. And one of the reasons I wasn’t aware of that was that our house was right next door to [homes]… inhabited by blacks, including our mailman…. In that period, there was social segregation…but the physical proximity was often closer than it is today.”
— Sam Smith
“I came here in 1965 as director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Washington Office…. Mayor three times and city council, mayor, back to the city council. It’s been a great journey. I love Washington. I love the people here too.”
— Marion Barry
“My maternal grandmother was an Alexander… after whose family... Alexandria, Virginia was named. And as my mother said, it took 300 years for them to get rid of all their wealth. They actually sold the land under the Supreme Court to the federal government…”
— G. Gordon Liddy
“The government had… an anti-gay policy which was as ferociously enforced as the present military gay ban and which deprived large numbers of gay people federal jobs… I lost my job on that account at the end of 1957. I was, to my knowledge, the first person to fight that back, I fought it all the way…to the Supreme Court and that…set the course of my life from that point onward.”
— Dr. Franklin Kameny