I am not a native of the DMV area. I learned very little of its history in school. When searching for a research topic I stumbled upon WAMU.org. It had specials about the crack epidemic that took place in Washington DC. It sparked an interest. I wanted to know how and why crack became so popular, and what impact it had on the community.
I listened to the interviews that WAMY.org had on their website with people who witnessed and were part of the epidemic. I used the key phrases that I heard on WAMU, such as “Operation Clean Sweep,” Rayful Edmonds, and Hanover Street, to conduct searches on Google, Bing, and on InPrimo, a search engine for George Mason University. Because this is a history project I had to narrow my searches to no later than 1989. Besides newspaper articles, and interviews, there was very little primary source material available. Much of what is available takes place in the early 1990s. This makes sense because it was on 5 September 1989 that President H. W. Bush brought the growing issue to the attention of the entire country. I chose images and interviews that I felt helped give snippets of what was going on at the time in Washington DC. I put them on Omeka.net to try to tell the story.
I was surprised to learn how extensive the problem really was. Tens of thousands of people were living to smoke crack cocaine. Thousands were killed in this time period, many directly related to the sale and use of the drug. There were also scores of children who were negatively affected, through neglect, by being exposed to the drugs, being dragged into the sale of crack, and through the effect that crack had in utero. I was also surprised at the little information there is available. Although this is part of the District’s more recent history, it is an important time in its history. The effects of the epidemic can still be seen today.