North Four Corners News ♦ December 2024

The Long-Gone Four Corners Citizens Association

By Jacquie Bokow

While dropping off an NFCCA Welcome Kit to them on Cavalier Drive, new neighborhood residents Nicholas and Elizabeth Dragonette were excited to pass on to me a box they’d found in the attic of their new home.  In it was some sort of mimeograph or stencil machine.  With it was an “Instructions” booklet (which crumbled more every time I touched it), an envelope containing unused “Duplicator Pads No. 4278,” and — the reason it came to me — a copy of the front page of the June 1958 “Four Corners Citizen,” the newsletter of the Four Corners Citizens Association, which must have been the last item printed on it.  Since I’m the editor of the current neighborhood newsletter, they thought I might be interested.

That house was built in 1955 and, according to the newsletter nameplate, the original home owner, Milton E. Abramson, was president of the FCCA from 1957–1958 and the newsletter editor.  I imagine the machine has been in that attic since 1958.

In September, I contacted Montgomery History (formerly the Montgomery Historical Society) to ask if they could tell me anything about the Four Corners Citizens Association or its newsletter.  As far as I can tell, the FCCA no longer exists.  In the past, “citizens” association tended to be code for an organization for Whites; “civic” associations were subsequently set up by People of Color excluded from membership.  This neighborhood, remember, used to have a covenant restricting it to Whites only, racist housing discrimination common throughout the United States.  (See “‘Guarded by Protecting Restrictions’:  The Color of Law in the Four Corners Subdivisions of Silver Spring,” a June 2021 “History Corner(s)” column by Ken Hawkins on our website, link below.)

Despite numerous emails sent, Sarah Hedlund, the Montgomery History librarian/archivist, never got back to me about the FCCA.

I hated to just throw out the mimeograph machine, which was in near-perfect condition despite the crumbling box it was in, but what could be done with it?  I contacted the Smithsonian Institution and exchanged several emails with Joan Boudreau, the Curator of the Graphic Arts Collection at the National Museum of American History, but — once I sent photographs — it seems they already have something similar.

In September, I asked Montgomery History if they’d be interested in receiving this relic.  Sammie Hatton, the Montgomery History Director of Collections, said their Collections Committee had to make the call.  That group finally met later that month and “were excited to see the mimeograph,” she wrote.  They voted to accept it and the other materials I had.  Sammie came by and picked everything up.  So perhaps someone will look at it there some day and be astonished that that’s how neighborhood newsletters were printed “in the olden days”!   ■

Guarded by Protecting Restrictions