Except for its ghosts, it’s empty inside.
Part of the hallway ceiling has come down, and the paint on the spiral staircase is flaking off. A rear wall is held up with steel girders, and, out front, the “National Historic Landmark” plaque is dirty and faded.
But as Kinard, of the National Park Service, enters, the story of Carter G. Woodson’s long-dilapidated home emerges — along with plans for its rebirth as a center for black scholarship.
Here, from 1922, when he bought the house for $8,000, through 1950, when he died in bed in his third-floor bedroom, this modest three-story brick building was the capital of African American history studies.
Here, in this 140-year-old dwelling in Washington’s Shaw neighborhood, Woodson, the solitary Harvard-educated son of former slaves, gave birth to black history amid some of the worst days of segregation in America.
