About the Screening

Join the Bertelsmann Foundation and the NYU in DC community for a virtual screening and panel discussion on, Barry Farm: Community, Land & Justice in Washington, DC. This is a Bertelsmann Foundation and DC Legacy Project Film directed by Sabiyha Prince and Samuel George, who will take part in the post-film conversation. Joining them on this panel is NYU DC's Academic Fellow and Part-Time Lecturer, Vicky Kiechel.

Take a left off of the Anacostia Freeway on to Firth Sterling Ave in Southeast DC–what do you see? You see empty fields. You see shiny new buildings just breaking ground. Construction equipment. Sweeping views of the capital. As one community member states in this film, if you are a developer, you see a gold mine.

But these empty fields hold powerful memories. Enslaved people once worked this land. Later, during Reconstruction, formerly enslaved individuals purchased it, and built one of DC’s first thriving Black communities.

Here, the city constructed a sprawling public housing complex in the 1940s, beloved by insiders, if notorious to outsiders. Here, the movement for Welfare Rights took shape. Here, the Junkyard Band honed its chops on homemade instruments before putting a turbocharge into the city’s Go-Go music. Here, residents lived in the Barry Farms Dwellings up until 2019, when the final community members were removed for the redevelopment.

This documentary film, a collaboration between the Bertelsmann Foundation and the DC Legacy Project, tells a story of a journey for community, land, and for justice. It is a story of Barry Farm, but it is also a story of Washington, D.C. And, in the cycles of place and displacement, it is a story of the United States of America.