On the History Trail with Prologue DC, LLC
Historians Sarah Shoenfeld and Mara Cherkasky of Prologue DC, LLC
Michon Boston Group is on a history trail with Prologue DC, LLC and co-founders historians Mara Cherkasky and Sarah Shoenfeld. Since June MBG and Prologue DC LLC have been working together on a museum research project for the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum and its 50th anniversary in 2017.
Mara Cherkasy presenting at the DC Historical Studies Conference (Washington, DC)
Mara and Sarah had previously researched and written a combined total of 12 DC Neighborhood Heritage Trails for Cultural Tourism DC, including the recently installed LeDroit Park/Bloomingdale and Anacostia trails. As Prologue DC they have completed a variety of projects for clients including American University’s Kogod School of Business, the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia, and Union Station Redevelopment Corporation.
Sarah Shoenfeld and Mara Cherkasky present at a GIS (Geographic Informaiton System) symposium in Washington, DC
Mara and Sarah are proudest of their ongoing, grant-funded, public history project Mapping Segregation in Washington DC, which documents in profound ways neighborhood change in the nation’s capital. The project has received significant attention from scholars, teachers, and journalists around the country as the first major effort to comprehensively document the legacy of racially restrictive housing covenants. They have presented the project to large audiences at DC public libraries, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, two DC Historical Studies Conferences, and local high schools and universities, among other venues. In the project’s current phase, they are documenting, for DC’s Ward 4, early African American communities, the segregated housing, schools and parks that replaced them, and resistance to residential segregation.
Prologue DC’s work is bringing history into the civic dialogue. By making history visible and accessible communities are engaged with the stories of the past that can inspire a vision for the future.