Black DC, Then and Now, in Edward P. Jones’s “Rhonda Ferguson”

By Kenton Rambsy

Fictional stories often preserve glimpses of real places and communities that have changed dramatically over time.

In Edward P. Jones’s “The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed,” four Black teenage girls drive from Columbia Heights to Anacostia around 1960 to take a classmate’s father the last of his belongings, then return home to learn that their friend Rhonda, a singer about to sign a record contract, has been killed at home.

Geotagging the places Jones names against census records shows that every stop on the girls’ route sat in a census area at least 70 percent Black, when all of DC was 54 percent. During the ride, Melanie predicts that a famous Rhonda will move to Georgetown to “be with all them white people,” and in 1960 Georgetown was about 1 percent Black.

Cassandra, Rhonda’s best friend, insists that “Rhonda’s gonna stay the same,” and Rhonda never leaves, but the city changes around her. The Black share around Rhonda’s block on 13th Street fell from 86 percent in 1960 to 29 percent by 2020. Only Anacostia, which Anita’s grandfather dismissed as a place where people “still lived with chickens and cows,” held its Black majority, rising from 84 to 90 percent.

Jones’s characters debate whether one girl will leave Black Washington, and the census shows Black Washington shrinking around the blocks they drove.

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