Clay Street

The First Baptist Church at Clay and West Washington streets in Annapolis was the right place to be last Monday, the 65th birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King.Those who have watched the civil rights movement from afar, or who have never felt the sting of injustice, or who still do not comprehend why we stop once a year to remember what Dr. King did, might have better understood had they been there.What a paradox is this church.Inside its vaulted walls, Dr. King's dream of every man, woman and child having an equal chance in life thrives.

Talk to some of the old-timers along Annapolis' historic Clay Street, and they'll say the neighborhood has seen its ups and downs: Once a vibrant African-American enclave, replete with black-owned businesses, the neighborhood struggled in the wake of civil rights-era rioting and the crack epidemic. The area is changing again, with a $24 million revitalization of the city's two oldest public-housing complexes, Obery Court and College Creek Terrace. The structures are being torn down and rebuilt with the help of a private developer.

Clay Street in Annapolis is littered with broken promises.In the 1950s, the neighborhood was the center of black life in Annapolis. Billie Holiday and Cab Calloway played at the Dixie Hotel. Residents stood in line on Friday nights to get into the Star Theater. Black-owned shoeshine shops, groceries and law offices lined the street.Then in the 1970s, when the neighborhood was starting to look rundown, the government promised to give it some help. Using federal urban renewal money, the government tore down 142 buildings and moved 114 families across town to new subsidized housing complexes.

Tymeerah Butts wasn't alive while Jimmy Carter lived in the White House. But the 26-year-old Baltimore woman can tell visitors to her future home that a former president framed out a front window. About 300 volunteers, including Carter, renovated houses in Baltimore and Annapolis Tuesday as part of a weeklong project with Habitat for Humanity, the home-building organization that owes its visibility to Carter, who became heavily involved in its operations after his presidency ended.

Concerned that Clay Street's needs too often are ignored, residents of the inner-city neighborhood asked a City Council committee last night for more money to renovate the community's parks, streets and buildings."

Strictly from an education standpoint, the County Council did the right thing last month when it cut money to give Annapolis' troubled Clay Street neighborhood its own school.Kids are spilling out of the classroom in Pasadena, in West County, on the Broadneck peninsula. Just about the only area not suffering from overcrowding is Annapolis. The schools there are operating under capacity.The money that had been earmarked to reopen Adams Park Elementary could be better used in other ways as well.

Pamela Simms found a summer camp for her 6-year-old daughter, and Silvia Hawkins learned about a quilt show and a jazz festival in the first issue of the Clay Street Newsletter, a publication written by and for residents of the historic Clay Street neighborhood.Organizers say they want to focus on the positive side of the blighted Annapolis neighborhood that most people associate with crime and drugs."It's to show that there is a way out of this mess," said Kirby McKinney, liaison between the community and the Clay Street Improvement Association, which is funding the project.

State police launched an intense sweep of drugs and crime in the Clay Street neighborhood yesterday, promising 24-hour-a-day patrols many residents hope will help reclaim their troubled community."

Clay Street, only a stone's throw from the State House, has received scant official attention over the past 20 years, but ever since community leaders won a battle to reopen a local school last summer, their verve to revive the neighborhood has proved contagious.Already, the Adams Park Community Alumni Association is planning fund-raisers for the school. Residents have organized a community association, and Annapolis officials have commissioned a study to develop strategies to improve life on the street.

Zastro Simms remembers Clay Street as the jewel of Annapolis' black community. Peggy Kimbo and her family were envious of the people who lived in the prosperous community where famous black personalities entertained standing-room-only crowds at nightclubs and hotels.Billie Holiday and Cab Calloway played the Turk Lounge at the Dixie Hotel, one of the few venues in town that admitted blacks. Pearl Bailey once sent a friend of Mrs. Kimbo's out to buy 25 cents' worth of baloney and crackers.

Mary Wolf was jogging around her adopted hometown of Annapolis when she turned a corner and discovered Clay Street, a community long blighted by poverty and crime, just steps from the State House and downtown Annapolis' restaurants and tourist attractions. The former television producer, who had run a successful computer literacy center in Washington, saw a need and wanted to open a center there in Annapolis. She didn't get much of a response. "People said, 'This will never work. Things never last on Clay Street.

Ground-breaking event held at Fort Meade Fort George G. Meade will hold a groundbreaking at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the pavilion for the construction of the co-location of the Defense and Military Adjudication Activities Facility, the third and final BRAC-related project at the base. Lt. Gen Richard P. Zahner, deputy chief of staff for Army G-2, will host the ceremony, part the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission Recommendations. The $31,856,596 contract was awarded to Skanska USA Building Inc. of Rockville and will provide 151,590 square feet of administrative space for approximately 760 employees from 10 agencies.

Lorraine Williams has never owned a house in her 63 years. Born in Annapolis, she moved around for years as her family followed her Navy father, settling first in Virginia and then returning to Annapolis, but never living in a home she could call her own. On Saturday, Arundel Habitat for Humanity will present Williams with her first house - and Habitat's 100th home - on Clay Street in Annapolis. "I feel wonderful. ... My roots come from Clay Street," she said, adding that her grandmother was called "the mayor of Clay Street."

Responding to an onslaught of criticism, Annapolis officials have drastically changed the boundaries of the proposed "Capital City Arts and Entertainment District" to exclude outer West Street and incorporate inner West Street and the Clay Street area. The city has also struck the word "entertainment" from the district's name to placate residents who argued it would bring an onslaught of entrepreneurs requesting 2 a.m. liquor licenses. It is now called the "Capital City Cultural Arts Center."

A special election has been scheduled in Annapolis for the alderman's seat vacated by Michael Christman, Mayor Ellen O. Moyer said yesterday. The primary election in Ward 2 will be held Nov. 27, with the special general election Dec. 19. The winner will fill the final two years of Christman's term. The Republican, one of only two on the eight-member city council, was elected in 2005 but officially resigned last week, noting frequent travel for his job. His wife also recently accepted a job in Australia.

The Annapolis housing authority added two more neighborhoods to its redevelopment list this week in a plan that calls for setting aside homes for ownership - a move that has some residents fearing permanent displacement. Annapolis Gardens and Bowman Court, off Admiral Drive, will see major renovations, increased security and improved landscaping by mid-2009. The agency plans to redo two Clay Street public housing communities by 2014. It expects to rehabilitate College Creek Terrace and raze and rebuild Obery Court.

IN CRIME-PLAGUED neighborhoods, no substitute exists for a visible police presence. That's why the state police's Operation People, which temporarily floods communities with troopers, has worked in just about every neighborhood where it has been tried. The sight of uniformed officers deters criminals, as residents of Annapolis' troubled Clay Street neighborhood found last summer after a month's worth of Operation People.It isn't feasible for every community to have officers walking the beat all the time, but dangerous ones need constant, conspicuous policing.

Two of Annapolis' oldest organizations in the fight for civil rights are looking to team up in an effort to help revitalize the Clay Street neighborhood. Wayne Jearld, president of the Anne Arundel County chapter of the NAACP, said yesterday he is in talks to move the organization's headquarters into the historic Universal Lodge No. 14 building by early fall. "The NAACP can be a stabilizing force in the community, and the longer we are there, the more we can make a difference," Jearld said.

For the first time in Annapolis, serious consideration is being given to a major outdoor art show as a city panel weighs in Tuesday on a proposal allowing a series of murals in public spaces as part of the city's celebration of its 300-year-old charter. For an old city, the new idea is viewed -- with cautious optimism from backers -- as a way to bring in the 21st century. About a dozen pieces would be included in the exhibit. "This brings art to people, not people to art," Sally Wern Comport, the Artwalk project curator, said in her West Street studio.