Josh Gibson and Marie Nahikian: A Minnesota congressman is one reason we have ANCs. But the true inspiration was the spirited tradition of activism of Adams Morgan.

Last summer, Washington Post columnist Colbert King wrote a tribute to the late Don Fraser, an eight-term congressman from Minnesota. While we do not disagree with the sentiment in the headline — “The District is a better place because of Don Fraser” — we do dispute one of the column’s core conclusions: That the credit for the creation of the District’s important advisory neighborhood commissions (ANCs) lies solely with the aforementioned Minnesotan. Fittingly, the real credit for the creation of ANCs in 1973’s original Home Rule Charter can be found right here at home, in one of DC’s own neighborhoods: Adams Morgan.

If those who dabble in local history know a single factoid about Adams Morgan’s past, it is the “origin story” behind the neighborhood’s name. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Bolling v. Sharpe and Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decisions in 1954, the principals of the all-white John Quincy Adams Elementary School and the all-black Thomas P. Morgan Elementary School came together to work cooperatively to tackle societal issues in the area surrounding the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW. 

A bevy of community groups were born in the years that followed: the Adams-Morgan Better Neighborhood Conference launched by the school principals; the similarly school-focused Adams-Morgan Community Council; the sports- and garden-driven Ontario Lakers Youth Organization; the New Thing Art & Architecture Center; and the Latin American Youth Center. 

Subsequently, as documented in the brilliant “A Right to the City” exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum, the community organizing that created the all-encompassing Adams Morgan Organization (AMO) in 1972 “united many of these [prior] efforts to establish an effective system of successful neighborhood self-government in a city without elected leadership.”

It is important to note that indigenous community leadership was the catalyst. Standout servant leaders in Adams Morgan included Topper Carew, Stephen Klein, Carlos Rosario, Josephine Butler and Walter Pierce.

AMO’s slogan, “Unity in Diversity,” was selected at the first meeting of the AMO Assembly and placed on the Adams Morgan flag (hand-sewn by Irma Nahikian, the mother of one of the authors) that flew from a kiosk that still stands at the intersection of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW. Residents spent almost a full year developing a governing structure for AMO that recognized the neighborhood’s economic diversity as well as its racial mix — about a third each African American, Latinx and white. 

The AMO charter created a participatory structure with power first vested in well-attended meetings of the assembly, where residents debated and voted on issues, set priorities and elected the chair. The assembly could charter committees to work on specific projects, issues and concerns from other community organizations. If a block association wanted better lighting, it could seek the support of the whole Adams Morgan community by making its request to the assembly. 

In the wake of the “urban renewal” that Southwest DC had suffered in the 1950s and 1960s (and which had sent some of its former residents literally packing to what is now known as Adams Morgan), neighborhood residents were unified in two core contentions: They would not again be victims of neighborhood destruction via “urban removal” and they could rely on no one but themselves to fight this urban scourge masked in the guise of a cure.

According again to the Anacostia Community Museum report, the aforementioned AMO “took up the mantle of self-government and community control. Tackling urgent issues like real estate speculation and residential displacement that were beginning to affect the neighborhood, AMO put participatory democracy into practice.”

To anyone who has ever served as an advisory neighborhood commissioner, this seizing of self-created power — born out of necessity and desperation, by sheer force of will, out of nothing, and in the face of insurmountable odds — will sound remarkably familiar.

That’s not just a coincidence: The District’s advisory neighborhood commissions were created with AMO as an active model of success. Neighborhood government was documented and developed by DC resident Milton Kotler, an architect of the AMO structure — and, not coincidentally, a close associate of the aforementioned congressman.

In a recent interview, Kotler confirmed his role with Fraser in drafting the congressional ANC language, with AMO as a model.

With support from David Clarke, an Adams Morgan attorney who went on to become the first elected Ward 1 DC Council member and later the council chairman, and Walter Fauntroy, DC’s non-voting member of Congress at the time, Kotler inserted into the Home Rule Charter the concept of ANCs, based on the success of AMO in Adams Morgan, as well as related neighborhood corporations in Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, Chicago and Columbus, Ohio. In 1974, Kotler and his wife, Greta, conducted training for the very first ANC commissioners; Greta Kotler also wrote the first ANC handbook.

The Adams Morgan Organization’s legacy lives on in many respects both in the neighborhood and throughout the District: Housing legislation, removal of a tax on food, Community Reinvestment Act challenges, and the creation of Walter Pierce Park are among the vestiges. However, the most significant legacy is the creation of ANCs with a municipal mandate of advisory powers and financial support. The broad community discourse they generate regarding improved neighborhood services, facilities and institutions as well as intelligent zoning and development decisions is truly critical.

In a District of Columbia that is still bereft of congressional voting rights, we must always remember that ANCs are a homegrown institution that sprang up from deeply District roots.

Josh Gibson is an Adams Morgan resident, former advisory neighborhood commissioner and co-author of the book Adams Morgan: Then and Now. Marie Nahikian is a founder and was the first executive director of the Adams Morgan Organization and was one of the District’s first elected advisory neighborhood commissioners; she was also a founder of WPFW-FM and is host of The Usable Past With Marie Nahikian.

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