K/now DIALOGUE

Gentrified Washington: The district's development and disappearance

with Marilyn gates-Davis

and Sabiyha prince 

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2026 | 6pm - 7:30pm

7920 NOrFolk Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland 20814

RSVP here if you plan to attend. Each attendee must RSVP individually.

Join artist Marilyn Gates-Davis and anthropologist filmmaker Sabiyha Prince as they chronicle black community emergence and disappearance in Washington D.C. This once sleepy southern town began as a white Federalist city built with enslaved labor; two hundred years later it emerged as the epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement where the March on Washington filled the National Mall, where black rioters torched white and black commercial corridors and where neighborhood organizers emerged as activist political leaders driving Home Rule. By the 1970s the nation’s capital was a hub of African American culture. The 1970 Census registered black residents at 71%; the number dropped precipitously to 41% in 2026. Real estate development and gentrification dramatically changed the equation, and longtime homemakers had no means to stay. Where We Once Belonged is Gates-Davis' erasure of the “bad neighborhood mark,” she says, asking us to remember and refresh with the life, the love, the legacy that remains.

Gates-Davis and Prince will address development and gentrification that have since uprooted the city’s long-established neighborhoods. Marilyn Gates-Davis paints ordinary people and everyday moments revealing the quiet, simple beauty. Prince is a celebrated artist and native Washingtonian who co-directed Barry Farm: Community, Land, and Justice in Washington, DC (2022) about the very community Gates-Davis captures in her current exhibition Where We Once Belonged at Amy Kaslow Gallery.

Join us for the K/NOW Dialogue on Wednesday, August 19, from 6pm to 7:30pm.