Heritage trails mark the path to preserving D.C. history

View Photo Gallery —  As H Street NE gentrifies, neighborhood natives are working with historians to uncover and restore the corridor’s history.

Others contain largely unknown D.C. tidbits: Who knew that go-go king Chuck Brown was a shoeshine boy outside the Howard Theatre as a child? (That story is on the Georgia Avenue/Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail) Or that deaf football players at Gallaudet University invented the American football huddle, so they could conceal their signs from opponents. (Photos of that first huddle are on the Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail).
Bennett says tracing the neighborhood’s history also brought her family together. As part of the research for the upcoming LeDroit Park/Bloomingdale trail, her cousins got together over breakfast to research the story of two priests in the family. One was Father Leslie Branch, the first African American Catholic chaplain in the U.S. Navy.

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