Despite it All, I Am Still the Dream and the Hope of a Slave
By Jayson Blair The evening after we published my podcast interview with John W. Fountain, the former reporter for New York Times and columnist for the Chicago-Sun Times , a friend who is a writer sent me a text message with a link to this story that John wrote in 1999 for The Washington Post . It started with: In the cold morning mist, The Avenue slowly awakens. The sky is patchy and purplish blue. It is almost 7 a.m. A spotty trail of men carrying bags and backpacks stuffed with their worldly possessions heads north on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE toward Good Hope Road. Traffic crawls. Exhaust pours from tailpipes, from mouths. Up and down The Avenue, dressed-up women wearing 9-to-5 faces walk in the slumberous rhythm of the morning toward the Anacostia Metro station. In a little while, the heavy iron security gates will go up on The Avenue's beauty salons and barbershops, its schools and churches, carryouts and storefront businesses. At Clara Muhammad School, the
