"The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges"
About this Quote
The phrasing "able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams" adds a slippery layer. The "his" signals an outside gaze - a patron, an observer, maybe a white power broker who expected failure or at best dependency. Smith’s point is not only that Washington’s Black community built something substantial, but that the broader culture routinely underestimated what Black autonomy could look like. The boast carries a rebuke.
Context matters because Washington, D.C. has long been a paradoxical stage: the symbolic capital of American democracy paired with the lived reality of segregation, exclusion from federal jobs, redlining, and political disenfranchisement. Separate institutions often emerged because integration was denied, yet Smith refuses to frame them as mere consolation prizes. The inventory reads like a counter-archive, insisting that Black modernity was not an add-on to the city but a parallel engine.
Subtext: when a community has "its own" everything, that’s resilience - and it’s also evidence of how hard the door was kept shut.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Smith, Ed. (2026, January 17). The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-washington-black-community-was-able-to-53240/
Chicago Style
Smith, Ed. "The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-washington-black-community-was-able-to-53240/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The Washington black community was able to succeed beyond his wildest dreams. I mean, we had our own newspapers, our own restaurants, our own theaters, our own small shops, our own clubs, our own Masonic lodges." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-washington-black-community-was-able-to-53240/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.
