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All Skate Chronicles Black In-door Skating Movement in DC
There is a deep and rich skating culture, specifically connected to African Americans in the District. Full Stop. Now, the bigger question. How do you preserve this history, while also making room for the next generation of skating enthusiasts?
This is a mission Necothia Bowens and Tasha Klusmann take very seriously. Their work "All Skate,” supported by a DC Oral History Collaborative Grant from HumanitiesDC, captures the stories of passionate roller skaters in the DC area, particularly the indoor African American roller-skating community.
“The project itself is about hearing from the roller skaters past and present, and carrying on the legacy that they started some years ago,” Bowens says.
Along with their passion, there is a sense of urgency to build this project. Generations of stories have passed without being recorded.
“DC hasn't had an indoor roller rink in 30 years. So, making these stories helps to show the benefit, and the value of this community,” Klusmann says. “[Furthermore], there is a foundation of people who now have children, grandchildren, and some great grandchildren. And their passion for skating, their legacy, continues.”
Bowens and Klusmann's mission is to capture those legacies through a combination of audio and video oral histories. The stories will live with the People’s Archive at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.
Read WTOP's feature on how Tasha furthered this work as a HumanitiesDC Independent Practitioner Fellow for 2023 and check out some of the artifacts and documents that have already been archived here.
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