Gentrification is not a fast death. Its a slow warming over that works its way into the body. There is a discovery that things have changed and then a new kind of normal. One day its a corner store, the next its an organic-hot-yoga-dim-sum communal space for people who dont look like you.

Chocolate City wants to remember one of their own but there has been pushback from interlopers who want a voice in the naming of things. Because thats the other side of Columbusing an area: its not just pillaging the land, its changing it entirely. In Washington, D.C., thats playing out in the fight to rename Good Hope Road in honor of famed Mayor Marion Barry Jr.

Its a new front in the war on race and public memory. A bizarre rhetorical battle is raging between Phil Mendelson, the Chair of the Council of the District of Columbia, who is white, and Councilmember Trayon White, who is Black and represents Ward 8, the Blackest ward in this gentrifying city.

White first floated the idea to rename a street in his ward after the late former mayor in 2019. He accused Mendelson of using his position to block the effort. Mendelson claimed this year that he needed more time for more hearings to decide. White, who convinced all but one of his colleagues on the council to co-sponsor emergency legislation to change the street name immediately, dismissed this move as more obstruction and delaying tactics.

This is an election year. This is a strange hill to die on. This is a solidly Democratic region that that only recently changed public streets and statues named after white supremacist Confederate traitors to America. Trying to block any recognition for Barry, a heroic, controversial figure who built Black economic and political power and rose from the political dead, is an exercise in futility.

Not only is resistance futile, renaming the street in the Blackest neighborhood left in gentrifying D.C. may be one of the only hopes for protecting it from the incursion of money and interests that profit from racism. All of it shows the long hand of Marion Barry from the grave.

Chairman Mendelson and I have crossed swords before over white supremacy in the citys arts policy . In emergency legislation last year, his colleagues unanimously rebuked his effort to toss me and Barrys widow, Cora Masters Barry, from the citys arts commission over the issue.

Mendelson will face voters from across the citys eight wards next week. Its baffling that the chairman would choose to antagonize Black voters across the city by picking this fight now.

I say baffling, not surprising. All across the country, swaths of Black communities have been swallowed up by the beast that is undefeated: gentrification.

The way things usually happen is the neighborhood is discovered, then transplants move in, the rent prices increase and suddenly an area once considered North of Massachusetts Ave. has suddenly become known as Noma.

It matters who gets to decide when it is time to speed up or slow down the naming of things. This is why the communitys fight to keep Barrys name alive is not only important its essential.

In the annals of Black Power, one anecdote explains why so many D.C. voters have zero tolerance for any slander or disrespect toward the name and likeness of the late Mayor for Life Marion Barry Jr.

As Cora Masters Barry told me in a 2020 oral history recorded for the Peoples Archive of the District of Columbia, her husband once hosted a group of Wall Street brokers. They arrived in a jet. They wanted the citys bond business, which represented billions of dollars.

Marion Barry Jr. made them wait 30 minutes. After thanking them for coming, he theatrically looked around to the sea of white faces in the room. Is this it? he asked. I dont see anybody around this table that looks like me, and you want our business.

He sent them away and told them to return when they had found some people who looked like him. The brokers complied, and that launched the careers of many Black Wall Street executives and Black-led firms.