East of the river that shares its name, Anacostia is among the most historically significant and consistently overlooked communities in Washington DC.
The Anacostia River takes its name from the Nacotchtank people who inhabited its banks for centuries before European contact. 'Anacostin' was a corruption of their tribal name, applied by English settlers to both the people and the river. The Nacotchtank were displaced and eventually absorbed or dispersed by the mid-eighteenth century.
In the decades after the Civil War, Anacostia became home to thousands of formerly enslaved people and free Black Americans who settled east of the river, outside the more crowded central city. The community they built — Barry Farm — was one of the first planned settlements for freedpeople in America, established by the Freedmen's Bureau in 1867.
In 1932, Anacostia became the site of one of the most dramatic confrontations between the United States government and its own veterans. More than forty thousand World War One veterans — the Bonus Army — marched on Washington demanding early payment of bonuses promised for their wartime service. They camped along the Anacostia waterfront. President Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to disperse them. MacArthur called in cavalry, infantry with bayonets, and tanks. The bonus camp was burned. Veterans were tear-gassed. A two-month-old baby died. The images shocked the nation and contributed to Hoover's landslide defeat by Franklin Roosevelt that fall.
Anacostia remains one of DC's most economically challenged neighborhoods — and one of its most resilient. The history beneath your feet is older than the city itself.