Family Perspectives 

In the Upper Level Historical Research Seminar, High School students investigated how race, place, and real estate intersect and influence access to opportunities for their respective families across generations.

During the seminar, led by HS history teacher Lisa Rauschart, students tapped into archival records—everything from U.S. Census Bureau data to birth certificates and old newspaper articles–to reconstruct their families’ roots. Historian Mara Cherkasky, a guest lecturer, also helped them pull property deeds, which often revealed restrictive covenants that barred certain racial groups from purchasing homes or living in specific areas, denying them access to a key wealth-building tool: homeownership. 

As they dug into their family histories, students also learned how to view the material through a broader historical lens with input from guest speakers, readings, interviews, and site visits to Baltimore or DC (depending on the semester).

“Many of the students found that their families’ stories intertwined with larger currents that swirled throughout the U.S. and indeed the world, during the last three hundred years,” Lisa said. “We’ve seen stories of immigration and migration and some difficult choices, as individuals responded to the pushes and pulls of their own experiences.”

Here are a few of the narratives that students shared:

Finding Community

Jhet Bond ʼ25 gained a deeper understanding of what “community” means when she documented her maternal grandmother’s experience in River Terrace, a neighborhood in the southernmost tip of Northeast DC.

Using census data and birth certificates, Jhet traced her grandmother’s story back to Greensboro, South Carolina, where Jhet’s great-great-grandfather, Joel Wims, owned a farm in the early 1900s near the “Promised Land,” a community founded by freed slaves. To provide a better life for his children, Wims used his savings from the farm to move his two grown daughters to the District. One daughter, Ethel, and her husband, Caleb Chiles, arrived in DC in 1939 amid the Great Migration, which saw millions of Black Southerners move to the North and West seeking better opportunities.

Soon thereafter, Ethel and Caleb settled in a two-story brick rowhouse in River Terrace—where they raised Jhet’s grandmother, Annette Chiles Wilson.

Jhet said her grandmother described a joyful childhood in River Terrace, which became a predominantly Black neighborhood after exclusionary covenants were declared unconstitutional in 1948. It was a place where residents left doors unlocked and children drifted into Mrs. Peters' kitchen when they smelled her Apple Stickies baking.

“[According to my grandmother,] there was an unspoken agreement there that everyone would look after each other,” Jhet said. “Neighbors would sit on their porches and wave or play chess at the local park. They’d make sure the kids got to school okay, or that someone was home when they returned. … It was a community built out of a sense of alliance, just like the Promised Land.”

Digging into their Jewish Roots 

Twins Bryan and Lauren Berman knew their parents were born and raised in the Baltimore area, but they did not appreciate the depths of their Jewish roots there until they started this project during their senior year.

Bryan ʼ25 researched their father’s side of the family, and Lauren ʼ25 their mother’s. They discovered that both sides had immigrated from Russia in the late 19th century and worked in Baltimore’s garment industry, which was largely dominated by Eastern European Jews fleeing persecution and economic hardships. 

“A strong and thriving Jewish presence in Baltimore helped my family assimilate and succeed because they immediately found a culture they recognized when they arrived in this country,” Bryan said. 

Using Ancestry.com, Lauren found a 1903 Sun notice about the arrest of a Wabash railroad laborer who stole a $12 overcoat from the shop of Robert Diamond—the twins’ maternal great-great-grandfather. Bryan discovered that their paternal great-great-grandfather, Hyman Berman, and his wife were taken to court for working at their tailor shop on a Sunday—a violation of the state’s Blue Laws. Their son Max, a World War I naval aviator who later opened a law firm with his son, used to meet with some of his clients in a small satellite office adjacent to the tailor shop near Lombard Street. On a trip to Baltimore, Bryan located the site where the shop once stood. 

After World War II, many Jewish families, including both sets of Bryan and Lauren’s grandparents, moved out of  Baltimore City in search of more green space and single-family homes in the suburbs. They left their rowhouses behind and settled in the Pikeville section of Baltimore County. Many Jewish institutions, including synagogues and community centers, moved there as well. Bryan and Lauren’s parents lived in the Pikesville area until they left for college.

“While the once-thriving Jewish neighborhoods in Baltimore City have faded, I still see traces of their legacy in landmarks like the synagogues they built,” Lauren wrote in her report. “...My family’s story remains deeply connected to the city’s evolving identity.”

From Pakistan to America

Through interviews, Sabrina Sandhu ʼ26 documented her grandfather’s journey from his chaotic childhood in Pakistan to the United States, where he established himself as an inventor and corporate leader at the behemoth Eastman Kodak of Rochester, New York.

“I concluded that the privilege I have today, the very fact that I can even be doing this project at this school, is rooted in my grandfather’s drive to leave his country to seek new possibilities,” said Sabrina, who lacked access to historical archives, as her grandfather’s small Pakistani village did not have the resources for record-keeping.

Sabrina’s grandfather, Mohammad Akram Sandhu, was a studious 11-year-old during the Partition of India in 1947, which led to the independent states of Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. While his Pakistani village was not at the center of the violence that ensued, he witnessed his share of bloodshed.

The trauma did not deter his academic ambitions. He went on to earn a BS and an MS in chemical technologies in Pakistan, where he patented his first invention, an anticoagulant. His work gained notice and led him to Scotland for his PhD. Though Dr. Sandhu planned on returning to Pakistan, he followed a trusted mentor’s advice and left for the U.S., where he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota.

Soon after, he was hired as a chemical researcher at Kodak and climbed the ranks, amassing nearly a dozen patents along the way. “I think people make a sacrifice when they leave their country and their culture. It’s like leaving parts of yourself behind,” Sabrina said. “But my grandfather valued the opportunities that came from leaving and made a special life for his family.”

* Featured photo: Senior Jhet Bond’s great-grandparents, Caleb and Ethel Chiles, arrived in DC in 1939 amid the Great Migration. Courtesy of Jhet Bond ʼ25