‘Matriarch of DC’ Mom Virginia Ali, Black icons mesmerize justice seekers with their stories at Busboys in Anacostia
The loveliest “Mom” in the nation’s capital, Matriarch of Washington DC, Ms. Virginia Ali, Roach Brown, Kenny Barnes, Dr. Edwin Chapman, Tyrone Parker and Dr. Franklyn Malone tell their stories at the Busboys and Poets Friday.
Written by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900 there’s a verse in his world famous hym Lift Every Voice and Sing, also called the Black national anthem, that reads:
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
That was true as not only when the hymn was written four decades after the end of Black slavery in 1900 but also during the last six decades in Washington DC.
Friday, Matriarch of Washington DC, Mom Virginia Ali was joined by five other leading Black civil rights crusaders— Roach Brown, Kenny Barnes, Dr. Edwin Chapman, Tyrone Parker and Dr. Franklyn Malone — to share their stories at the Busboys and Poets in historic Anacostia.
The event “Honoring Our Matriarchs & Patriarchs: They Marched for Us,” was organized by the Open Mic for Anacostia. The main aim was to record for posterity the lived experience of Black icons in the nation’s capital.
The Open Mic for Anacostia is hoping the DC government may honor all the matriarchs and patriarchs of the civil rights movement on National Senior’s Day, August 21.
Many Americans don’t know their country command respect in world not due to any president or their military power but because of Black heroes such Truth Sojourner, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks and Maya Angelou among many others. America, if respected at all in international eyes, is because it is the land of visionaries such as Frederick Douglass, Arthur Shores, Rev Fred Shuttlesworth, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. Dubois, James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin, among such selfless souls who gave their all to their people.
In Washington, D.C.— built by slave blood, sweat and tears—, Blacks find themselves under siege in the backdrop of the decades long undeclared, surreptitious socioeconomic warfare being waged against them. Once called Chocolate City, Blacks are being deliberately pushed out from the nation’s capital with their population dropping from 70 percent in 1980 to just 46 percent now.
Fears run high that the developers are now eyeing the Potomac Gardens in South East as the DC government was allegedly allowing the historic dwelling to rot just like it did with Barry Farm and finally threw the residents out. The apartment complex will soon become 60 years old.
Blacks have the lowest home ownership rate among the different races not only because the wealth their labor produced were looted by the slave owners without any pay but also because their neighborhoods were destroyed by the white rulers in a cold blooded manner.
In stead of providing stable housing, the U.S. government destroyed as many ad 2,000 historic Black communities nationwide in the name of gentrification, which Black rights advocates like DC-based Ambrose Lane Jr. call ethnic cleansing.
These activists accuse Mayor Muriel Bowser of showing zero concern for Black and Brown folks. Bowser— ranked as one of the worst mayors for Blacks— has made drastic budgetary cuts in all social sectors while giving away $515 millions to billionaire Ted Leonsis on a silver platter.
Restauranteur-cum-peace activist Andy Shallal speaking at “Honoring Our Matriarchs & Patriarchs” Friday at Busboys in Anacostia.
Andy Shallal was present to welcome the guests. Busboys is the preferred venue for progressive activists as Shallal waives the rent for good causes. He calls Mom Ms. Virginia Ali as his North Star.
In the backdrop of nationwide student protests against Zionist war crimes in Gaza, Shallal lauded the student protest at Georgetown University.
Washington D.C. economist Scott Borgor and William Spence, CEO and founding board member of Breadcoin respectively, volunteered to do the raffle work at Busboys Friday. Breadcoin is helping combat food insecurity by setting up flashtables in most distressed neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.. and some other cities thru pro-people food vendors.
William Spence, DC leader of Breadcoin, Friday at the Busboys & Poets.
Here are the bios of the guest speakers:
Mom Virginia Ali
She truly exudes the charm of a global leader.
When commonwealth Virginia was referred to as the Mother State of U.S. racism, she could not stop laughing. In a different time, when White Supremacists would deny her and her girlfriends entry at the MacArthur Movie Theatre— operated jointly by K-B Theatres and Warner Bor. Circuit Management Corp.— to watch the film they liked for being colored, according to Bernard Demczuk, Ben’s Chili Bowl historian, the girls would walk “away laughing loudly.”
In the backdrop of ugly racism, the beautiful Black and Native American woman kept her classy grace. Her name is Virginia Ali (nee Rollins), Matriarch of Washington DC.
Mom Virginia Ali mantra is, “More people! Yes, of course.”
According to famous radio personality Donnie Simpson, “The heart and soul of Washington runs through Ben’s Chili Bowl. Virginia Ali is the pulse of U street and beyond.”
All this has been cited by Demczuk in his biography of Ms. Virginia Ali, titled “Breaking Barriers with Chili— Matriarch of DC.” The book sheds light on the life of Ms. Virginia Ali. The book is presently available at Ben’s Chili Bowl locations. Ben’s Chili Bowl was one of the few business places spared by Blacks enraged the killing of the messenger of peace and love, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — one of the best Americans to walk on the face of earth— April 4,1968.
Two days later Sunday May 5, 2024 at Ben’s Chili Bowl. It is Cinco De Mayo and Mom is part of the celebration, working until 8:30 pm.
Demczuk’s book cites Rev. Mark Thompson as saying, “Mrs. Ali is beloved in the entire progressive community for opening her heart, and her wise counsel to anyone coming into Ben’s to exhale, especially when we most needed to exhale. She is indeed, DC’s matriarch.”
Kymone Freeman, who was present Friday and showed an interest in Demczuk book, is cited as saying, “No matter if you are the president, mayor or janitor, Mrs. Ali believed ‘Treat people the way you want to be treated.’ She’s the great equalizer, quiet social justice advocate & DC matriarch;” Roach Brown said, “Virginia Ali is love;” and Andy Shallal said, “Virginia Ali embodies the best in all of us.”
Mom— Ms. Virginia Ali, was born on Sunday, December 17, 1933. She is of African American and Native American Rappahannock descent. Ms. Virginia Ali was raised in her birth place Occupacia in rural Virginia and was educated in a segregated school system. Just 12 years and nine months before her birth, the U.S. had an outspoken Klansman, Woodrow Wilson, as the 28th president. The year she was born was the year that racist U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, founder of the racist Byrd machine that controlled Virginia politics for seven decades and sought to keep Blacks subjugated as second class citizens, was elected U.S. senator. His son Harry Byrd Jr. picked up the baton from his father and continued his hate filled mission.
Coincidentally, on Mom’s 18th birthday, Black intellectuals approached the United Nations and charged the U.S. of committing genocide of the Blacks.
Ms. Virginia Ali moved to Washington, D.C., in 1952. After moving to Washington, she worked as a teller at Industrial Bank, a historic Black owned business. It was there that she met her future husband Ben Ali when he visited the bank to deposit money from a local restaurant where he worked.
She and her husband opened Ben's Chili Bowl on 1213 U Street in Washington, D.C., on August 22, 1958. Less than two months after launching Ben Chili Bowl’s on October 10, 1958 amidst quite a few challenges the two tied their nuptial knots as love crossed religious lines: her family was Christian, his was Muslim.
Many celebrities frequented the family-run restaurant, in the heart of the Shaw neighborhood. The restaurant became a favorite late-night haunt for the likes of Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington and Redd Foxx.
Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, and Stokely Carmichael often ate together at Ben’s Chili Bowl. Even President Obama went there not only as president-elect but also during Covid.
During the 1968 Washington, D.C., riots after the death of King, Mom and Ben Ali kept the Chili Bowl open at the request of Stokely Carmichael.
Mrs. Virginia Ali and Ben Ali were inducted into the DC Hall of Fame in 2002. They received the Key to the City from mayor Adrian Fenty in honor of the restaurant’s 50th anniversary in 2008.
Mom still greets diners there daily. “I really do enjoy people from all walks of life, and this place has provided me the privilege of doing that,” she says. “I’ve served presidents and judges and every profession you can name. But I’ve also served the heroin addicts, the crackheads, and the bums. And if you treat every one of them the way you would like to be treated, you don’t have a problem.”
Mom said the person who inspired her most was her father, Alphonso Boo Rollins.
Her late husband Ben Ali was quite prophetic. “You know when we get married, we will have beautiful children,” he used to tell the love of his life in 1957 before they married. He was right.
Today Mom Virginia Ali— one of the most photographed women in the U.S.—, along with her three sons, Haidar, Kamal and Nizam, their beautiful wives and children, are diligently serving the DC community, and indeed humanity.
Roach Brown
The DC native says his favorite Black icon is Nelson Mandela and his message to the youths of all races is: “Never ever give up (in the fight for justice).”
Rhozier T. “Roach” Brown presence brings joys on the faces of people around him as he says, “Merry Christmas; tell it to the hat.”
Mr. Brown has a powerful story, from life sentence to reformer.
While serving a life sentence and advocating for prisoners’ rights, Mr. Brown was paralyzed during a guards’ riot. Eight months in solitary confinement found Roach writing a poem in the dust under his bunk. This led to the creation of The Inner Voices, an acclaimed prison theatrical troupe. This phenomenal troupe traveled outside the gates of Lorton Correctional Complex over 500 times without a single escape or incident, performing original plays, skits and social dramas. They also performed live at the Smithsonian Institution in a Special Exhibit for the White House Conference on Drugs.
Mr. Brown was granted extended furloughs from prison to work at National Public Television to rewrite one of his plays, “Holidays…Hollowdays,” which won the New York Film Festival Best Social Film of the Year award.
Hired as a trainee at Metro Media TV (now Fox TV), Mr. Brown was promoted after one year to Producer of BLACK NEWS. Outstanding content led to three Emmy award nominations. The film “Slam,” in which he played a role and provided technical assistance, won first place at the 1998 Cannes International Film Festival. . The film “Circle of Love”, starring The Inner Voices, won the International Film Festival award.
Mr. Brown appeared before the U.S. Senate in defense of the incarcerated, While Mr. Brown was still incarcerated, the late comedian Richard Pryor took The Inner Voices on a historical national tour, starting at the Apollo Theater, where Black crowds enthusiastically welcomed them. The late President Gerald R. Ford commuted Mr. Brown’s life sentence, granting him immediate parole on Christmas Day 1975.
Mr. Brown works untiringly to help the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, directing the first adult restitution program in conjunction with the D.C. Superior Court and the U.S. Department of Justice; helping pass legislation restoring voting rights to the formerly incarcerated in D.C.; and securing a Mayoral Resolution proclaiming September 10 as National Ex-OffenderDay.
Appointed by Mayor Marion S. Barry as Special Assistant, Mr. Brown also created the Office of Ex-Offender Affairs (now the Mayor’s Office of Returning Citizens Affairs— MORCA). Mr. Brown was the chief architect of the successful re-election of Marion Barry as Mayor as he conceived and organized the 1994 mayoral campaign strategy of registering the formerly incarcerated and their families to vote. He was on the planning committee for the Million Man March to mobilize ex-offenders.
Mr. Brown is Chairman of the Coalition of National Association of Ex-Offenders and Board member of “PIPS” (Previously Incarcerated People), a national group comprised of over 75 organizations from 25 cities.
Mr. Brown loves his oppressed Black folks and yearns for justice for all those who have been affected by the White Supremacist criminal justice system.
While Mr. Brown was serving a life sentence on furlough from Lorton Reformatory, working at MetroMedia TV station Fox 5, the Jerry Lewis Telethon was airing with soul singer James Brown as invited guest. At the time, a 19 year old was assisting the producers, when Mr. Brown asked for her number. At the time, he told her mother that day that he would marry her daughter one day.
Mertine Brown and Mr. Brown were married 37 years later . Ms. Brown cannot imagine what her life would be without Mr. Brown, who def as dedicated as he is to releasing those who are serving inhuman sentences due to racism.
His birthday March 22 (in 1944) is the day in when a Black man and white woman were arrested in 1901 for walking together in Nashville, TN.
Dr. Franklyn Malone
Dr. Franklyn Malone credits his late parents for grooming him as a community leader.
“Nobody will save us from us, for us, but us,” said the late Calvin William Rolarks, publisher of the Washington Informer. And this is exactly the favorite quote of Dr. Franklyn M. Malone.
Dr. Malone was born Tuesday November 22, 1949 in Washington DC to anti-segregation leaders of their time Ann and Franklyn Malone Sr. They groomed him to help his people. His first job was at the historic South East Neighborhood House. “I became a community leader at age 14,” said Dr. Malone.
Courtesy Vera Fields.
Not surprisingly, he ganged up with the visionary publisher of the Washington Informer Calvin William Rolarks to win the rent control referendum in 1985 against Mayor Marion Barry.
Dr. Malone is the 2023 Maryland General Assembly Citation Holder as a Living Legend. He holds the 2022 Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award from President Biden and D.C. Hall of Fame 2020 Community Leader.
Dr. Malone operates a powerful fatherhood led rites of passage program transforming the lives of young men of color in the toughest schools and neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. and train others to perform this work. He is credited with sharing “My Brother's Keeper” concept with President Barack Obama and serves on the Political Action Committee of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. which had pledged to register One Million Men to vote in 2020.
Dr. Malone was the 2020 National Co-Chair of the National Black Men for Biden Harris and Cofounder of The Million Man Vote.
"As leaders of Faith we must learn to use the power of the wind, water, rain and storm that capsized the boat............To bring us back safely to shore,” he said.
His birth day has relevance since on that day November 22, in the year 1865, white masters and mistresses in Mississippi were allowed to buy black orphans.
Tyrone Parker
“Do all you can for as much as you can for those that are making a difference in our community,” he says.
Tyrone Curtis Parker comes from neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. worlds away from the White House. Born Wednesday November 6, 1946, he says when he was growing up, in spite of racism and poverty, a sense of community sustained people in those neighborhoods. In the backdrop of racist maneuvering by the powers-that-be against Blacks, Mr. Tyrone has struggled to restore that sense of community to those neighborhoods—putting his life on the line so others might live.
Raised by a hard-working single mother, Mr. Tyrone had early brushes with the law. In 1966, he was convicted of bank robbery— he was charged with robbing three banks in one day— and went from high school to prison. In prison, he became involved in community service projects that helped him acquire a “reservoir of different concepts.” He eventually won parole—but not yet freedom: he was on parole until 2013.
When Mr. Parker was released from prison in 1987, he returned home to a “killing epidemic,” where violence was the rule, not the exception it had been in his youth. In 1989, Mr. Parker’s son, a rising star in the D.C. music world, was slain by a stray bullet—an innocent bystander to a gun fight at a skating rink. No one was safe from flying bullets—not the elderly on their way to church, not the children playing in the street, not the young men desperate for respect and a piece of America’s pie. The sense of community that he had grown up with was itself in danger of being killed off.
Rather than keep doing the traditional community service work he’d started in prison, Mr. Parker and four old friends from high school— Rahim Jenkins, Joe Nelson, Eric Johnson and James Alsobrooks—formed the Alliance of Concerned Men and sought to stop the bloodshed at its source—in the deadly neighborhoods of Washington. Armed only with their street-smarts, they became volunteer peacemakers, improvising strategies as they stepped onto blood-stained pavement.
The Alliance confronted street violence on a person-to-person level: “I always say, if somebody started it, then somebody can end it.” Since 1991, Mr. Parker and the Alliance have brokered truces in Washington’s gang-plagued neighborhoods, earning trust in a world that is “like a complex maze” in which one street-corner gang may have several different-minded crew members. Mr. Parker and Alliance mediators sought out the killers and the vengeful, confronted Uzi-packing street leaders, settled disputes, and worked to provide paths out of crime and violence.
Beyond its emergency gang interventions, Alliance programs served about 300 kids a day. Operating on the premise that every individual has infinite worth and dignity, the Alliance took a comprehensive approach to creating social justice, sponsoring programs on substance abuse, life skills training, post-incarceration and after school programs. It did so with fewer than a dozen full time staffers augmented by some 75 volunteers.
“If you’ve got the will and the spirit to go, then usually everything falls into place. It all comes down to who’s willing to go,” Mr. Parker says. “If we don’t go, people lose their lives.”
Mr. Parker says Rev. Willie Wilson, founder of the Union Temple Baptist Church, is his Black icon. The church is a progressive Black church with a feminist streak and open and welcoming to LGBTQ folks.
His favorite quote is "Ain’t no air in that,”
Mr. Parker’s message for the youths is "If there's nothing worth you dying for, then there's nothing worth you living for."
Mr. Parker was born on the same day "Lift Every Voice and Sing" writers James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson wrote penned Black national anthem! Also two centuries earlier, on the same day albeit two centuries earlier Absalom Jones rose from slavery to become the first black to be ordained as a priest and launched St. Thomas, the first black Episcopal church. What a coincidence: sitting to his left was Dr. Malone, a Black episcopal lay leader.
Other significant things related to Black history on November 6 are: U.N. Cut ties with South Africa because of its racist crimes and Black woman Sharon Pratt was elected mayor of DC
Dr. Edwin Chapman
He believes every other human being is his own extension.
The “People’s Doctor,” Dr. Edwin C. Chapman, message to the youth is: Stay woke and the truth shall set you free. “Truth beaten to the ground will rise again,” he wrote in an email to the DC government, which he says is the fifth column of Black haters.
When asked, Dr. Edwin C. Chapman said his favorite quote is “Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” These were Booker T. Washington words.
Born Monday, March 25, 1946, Dr. Chapman’s life was shaped by two leaders in his family – his father, Joseph Conrad Chapman, Sr. and his mother Louise Gross Chapman— both educators.
Courtesy Vera Fields.
After high school, Dr. Chapman followed his oldest brother, Dr. Joseph Chapman, Jr. and enrolled in Howard University in Washington, D.C. as an undergraduate in 1964, followed by Howard University College of Medicine in 1969.
While working as the medical director for a new methadone clinic in the early 2000s, he says. “It became clear to me that so-called toxic stress was a major driver of addiction in the African American community.”
He began to see the need to merge primary care and substance use disorder treatment in the same facility with the help of on-site mental health services. “Our African American patient population was suffering from anxiety, depression, racism, among other things. They were self-medicating their problems. We needed to start treating the whole person,” he said.
Says Dr. Chapman, “Mental health and substance use disorder are parallel issues. Due to stigma in the patient population that I work with, people feel abandoned by both society and their families. We need to address this as community wide collaborative issue rather than an individual problem.”
As founding member and secretary of the board of directors of the Leadership Council for Healthy Communities (an inter-faith non profit) Dr. Chapman is bringing integrated medical care into underserved communities using psychiatry and primary care.
Dr. Chapman currently collaborates on research protocols with the Howard University School of Pharmacy and College of Medicine. He has been featured in numerous publications and has won several awards.
By vowing not to cut for stone, the outspoken Dr. Chapman is following in the footsteps of his Black icon, psychiatrist and philosopher Dr Frantz Fanon, who penned “The Wretched on the Earth.”
Dr. Chapman is married to Ann Patterson Chapman, RN, BSN, who attended Howard University School of Nursing. She came out of retirement to help folks during COVID. They have two children, Edwin Jr. and Mia and two grandsons, Edwin lll and Cristiano.
Fifteen years prior to On Dr. Chapmans birth on that same day March 25, nine Scottsboro boys was taken off an Alabama train and charged with raping two white women; on his 19th birthday, the Black March for voting rights was launched in Selma by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. About that moment, Dr. King said, “There never was a moment in American history more honorable” than that day as people of different races converged on Selma in solidarity with the Black struggle.
Kenny Barnes
Courtesy Vera Fields.
He said his Black icon is none else but Mom, Mrs. Virginia Ali.
The anti-gun advocate said his favorite saying is: “Violence and gun violence are not just a legal problem; it’s a public health epidemic and a mental health crisis.”
Kenneth E (Kenny) Barnes Sr., MS, born at Freedman's Hospital in Washington, D.C. Tuesday April 3, 1945, said one person he hates most is Donald Trump. He compares the former president with Adolf Hitler. He said the Trump entire campaign for presidency has a foundation of racism compiled with lies and manipulation. “His populist racist rhetoric has divided this nation in half and could possibly lead to the overturn of democracy as we know it,” he warns.
Mr. Barnes message for all youth is, “In order to understand you we need to be able to connect with you and mutually respect one and other.”
Barnes grew up in the Trinidad neighborhood in the 1950s; he was bused to Wilson Elementary School and attended McKinley High School. He got married in 1962, and his son Kenny, Jr. was born that year. Mr. Barnes, who also had four daughters, worked in a variety of professions, including as an insurance agent and concert promoter.
Mr. Barnes one of the early proponents of the go-go movement in the 1970s. He was a key figure during the nascent days of the Soul Searchers, the legendary Chuck Brown-led band that brought the genre’s funk and vibe to DMV neighborhoods.
According to Lindiwe Villakazi of the Washington Informer, Barnes and his partner Mel Edwards founded a popular weekend event, “Friday NightGo-Go,” in Palmer Park, Md., at a venue known as The Squad Room, which became the birthing ground of go-go music.
Mr. Barnes credits Chuck Brown with founding the District’s signature genre — contrary to the narrative of the late Brown merely popularizing the movement after its creation.
Mr. Barnes retired in 1990 after a severe asthma attack left him on a ventilator for a month.
By the 2000s he was working on a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Loyola University when his son Kenny Barnes, Jr. was shot dead in his store Boutique U in 2001 by a seventeen-year-old acquaintance.
After his son's murder, Mr. Barnes became a gun violence prevention activist. In The backdrop of official apathy, he founded a nonprofit, ROOT (Reaching Out to Others Together) to address gun violence as a public health crisis. With Kenny Barnes Jr.'s widow, Annette Gregory Barnes, he fought Youth Services Administration (YSA) in court, helping to get it replaced by the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS).
He created sociological questionnaires to understand D.C. children's experiences with gun violence. In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder awarded him with the National Crime Victim Service Award.
He played a major role fighting the Second Amendment Enforcement Act, which sought unsuccessfully to overturn D.C.'s ban on semiautomatic weapons.
In 2019, he worked with the Milken Institute at George Washington University to bring youth and police together through The National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officials (NOBLE) to discuss issues of perceptions and communication between the two groups.
Mr. Barnes message for all youth is, “In order to understand you we need to be able to connect with you and mutually respect one and other.”
Mr. Barnes 23rd birthday was the day when Dr. King delivered his last public speech at a rally of sanitation workers in Memphis TN in which he said “I've been to the mountaintop” and “seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with yo….”