Community History: Jason Green on Too Precious to Lose

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Civics and Coffee, a history podcast. The show all about United States history, delivered to you and the time it takes to enjoy your morning cup of coffee. I'm your host, Alicia, a historian trained in United States history with a passion for telling both the known and unknown parts of America's past. So grab your coffee and get ready for some bite-sized history. Welcome back, everyone. Big national stories, like the Civil Rights Movement or The New Deal, never struggle for ink, as scholars spend decades investigating various threads and debating any number of interpretations. Yet so much of history is made up of small local stories driven by otherwise unknown individuals. That is what makes Jason Green's story so special, and why I appreciated getting a chance to talk with him about his journey through collecting community history. I hope you all enjoy the conversation. Hello, everyone. Joining me today is Jason Green. He is an attorney, community builder, and author whose book, Too Precious to Lose, blends memoir, oral history, and archival research to uncover the rich history of a once thriving Black community in Maryland, which will be the focus of our conversation today. Welcome, Jason.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Such a pleasure to be with you, Alicia. Thank you for making time.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Thank you so much for being here. Let's dive right in. You wrote what I describe as a part memoir and part micro history. So, kind of what motivated and what prompted you to share this story?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Well, it's kind of was it was a calling, right? I wish I had had an option as to whether or not I was going to tell this story, but I really don't feel like I did. At one point, at least I tried to get others to write this story, but I was called to tell it myself just to set the stage. I was four years into serving as associate uh White House counsel uh to President Obama when I got a call from my mother that my then 95-year-old grandmother was sick uh and in the hospital. And it afforded me an opportunity to go and sit with her where I thought that I might go and bring her these gifts of dignity that I had watched her give to people. Uh, my grandmother used to take me to volunteer at the same hospital where she was. And I'd, you know, watch her sit with people late in life. And so I was like, okay, I'm supposed to go sit with my grandmother late in life and be the same sort of distraction, gossip, you know, friend that she was. And lo and behold, she ends up giving me all these gifts of telling me the rich history of Quince Orchard, telling me the story of our family, and uh really giving me a foundation that ultimately, you know, gets gets captured in the pages of Too Precious to Lose.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah. Well, and a theme of this book is community. And so can you talk about the power of community and the myriad ways it it provides support?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Well, when I think about community, Alicia, I think about sort of the group of people that we are accountable to, that we have responsibility for, right? And I think the work my grandmother did was to try and continue to grow that circle of people that you feel some sense of responsibility and accountability for, and accountability to. And my grandmother, you know, she built community kind of one door at a time. She was an Avon lady for 65 years, you know, walking her beat, going door to door with her Avon books, and she'd show up in a community and the kids would come out and yell, the Avon lady was here. And so she continued to build this sphere of people that she felt responsible for. And so Quince Orkshirt, you know, we'll talk about how it existed in my grandmother's time period, it existed in my father's time period. By the time I get got there, uh, I grew up in what's called Gaithersburg. Uh now that that community is even referenced as North Potomac. So it continues to evolve, right? But the Quince Orkshirt that they talk about is this small community, uh, predominantly of family and friends that acted like family, um, a place where it's often described where you had so many eyes looking upon you that if you did something wrong and got into trouble, you might get a firm hand on the backside before you even got home, right? People felt that accountable to one another. And the the beauty of that sort of community, um, and and why I look back so longingly and lovingly on it, is this sense of solidarity, the sense of belonging in place, where uh in uh in Quince Orchard, my ancestors helped build a uh a community plot called Pleasant View, where they built a church, schoolhouse, cemetery. And there just really was this just beautiful sense of sanctuary, where a lot, particularly in that time period where the world was calling that community second class, there people were to sort of live their best lives uh and and and feel like they could rely on one another. Uh, a phrase that I heard a lot in doing this research was that your neighbor was your insurance policy. You know, when something might fall ill, when you needed that that cup of sugar, uh my neighbor growing up was my grandfather's pig farm. And so, you know, he would kill the prized hog and and we would share that on the street. And so it really was an opportunity for your neighbor to be uh present for you and to be that sort of pillar that you needed when you needed something to lean on.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Throughout this book, you you're you're sharing how you captured this history, and and part of that is you you kind of engaged in an unintentional crash course in in oral history with the project. And so how did this frame your approach to to telling the story and what did you learn in the process?

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, I wish I was like technically trained like you are in this work, but again, I was sort of pulled into it a bit unwillingly. Um, as I'm sitting with my grandmother in her hospital room, at some point I say, Oh, maybe I should buy a tape recorder and so start recording this. And then I get a uh, you know, a camcorder and we start videoing her. And then my grandmother and her brilliance, uh, as you're suggesting, she would say, if that part of the story is interesting to you, you should get out of my room and go talk to someone else. And so it took us down this path of talking to nearly 80 other members of the community, building this sort of anthology of stories. And that struck me, at least when I when I learned that my African-American 95-year-old grandmother's story was oddly parallel to the the 99-year-old white woman that I met uh who lived across the street from her, I I wanted to figure out how these tales could come together, where they diverted, where they converted, and and that sort of then got me closer to the idea of doing something more formal and putting this down on paper into a book.

unknown 6:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Well, and and how did this oral history project kind of upend some of what you thought you knew about the story of the American past?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Well, what I realized is that I didn't think I knew that much, particularly around this community. And so it upended my my ignorance in some respects, right? So I grew up, this you you know, we started talking about this idea of Quint's Orchard. I grew up walking down Quint's Orchard Road, and eventually I graduated from Quince Orchard High School, but it never dawned on me that maybe there was a place called Quint's Orchard. I only thought that that high school was named after the street that ran in front of it. And here in my grandmother's hospital room, I have my first tense moment with my grandmother where she tells me she wasn't born in Gaithersburg. She was born in Quint's Orchard. Well, me and my arrogance, right, say, Grandma, what are you talking about? Quince Orchard isn't a place. Quint's Orchard is a road. And so um, I had to go into the stacks, right, and start doing some research. And I find this article from 1908 that is encouraging people who have this newfangled automobile, right, to get out of Washington, D.C. and experience the surrounding towns. And there in black and white, you see Quint's Orchard, right? Noted for its churches. Like it even was noted for something. And so it, you know, gave me license to run back into my grandmother's hospital room and you know, wave around a piece of paper and say, you know, grandma, did you ever know that Quint's Orchard was a place? And of course, she wanted to like use the back of her hand on me, but it gave us, you know, something to build upon. So that was one thing just to know that the I was a descendant from a place, to learn that my ancestors had a role in sort of establishing the black community that came uh post-emancipation. Uh, I didn't know that. I I knew that we had sort of the story that was told at the family reunion every year. My great-great-grandparents, uh my great-great-grandfather was Gary Green, my great-great-grandmother was Matilda Mason Green. And so the story that was told was, you know, Gary Green was an aspiring carpenter, and he met Matilda Mason, who was a housemaker, and they met each other in the 1840s and they lived happily ever after. And you start to question, well, there's got to be a little bit more to this story, maybe. And so I remember going and asking my grandmother, you know, it was my oracle, what she said was divine. I said, you know, grandma, was there a slavery component to our family story? And she said, no. She said slavery didn't exist in that part of Maryland. So I took her word as bond, right? And was ready to head out the door and then paused. And it's like, you know, trust but verify, right? And so I said, Grandma, I'm not sure it quite works that way. And of course, we know that it didn't. It was at least one of the things that was so striking was how quickly that story crumbled when when I pushed. I was like, Grandma, and she quickly said, you know, Jason, I actually think it was too hard for my grandparents to talk about. It was too hard for my parents to talk about. We just didn't talk about uh those things. And as and you know this very well, in the absence of the truth, she'd filled that story with something else that sort of allowed her pride to be full, right? A story to be completed. And so we you know went back into the stacks and into the archives and were able to unearth uh the the the truth about that story. Uh I expected us to have a slavery component to our story. I just thought it was gonna be like Montgomery, Alabama. I didn't think it was gonna be Montgomery County, Maryland, just a few miles from where we grew up. But but this is your point about kind of upending what we thought we knew about where we lived and and sort of using both the oral history and going into the archives to to supplement that and and and replace it where it was incorrect.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah. Well, and one of the kind of pivotal moments uh in this story is the when you're talking about Quince Orchard, is is the story of the decision to kind of combine churches within the community. So can you discuss kind of this decision and how it happened and and maybe why it was such a pivotal moment for a town like Quince Orchard?

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Sure. So there were kind of two stories that really got me animated about this whole project. The first was 1868, the sort of founding that I alluded to. And then fast forward 100 years, right? So this was this small fledgling farming community that was able to preserve this site for 100 years, which is a testament in its own right. And then in 1968, so we were starting with my great-great-grandparents. In 1968, now we're talking about my grandmother, right? Who have this very close relationship with. She, uh, when I was growing up, she and my grandfather lived at the top of our street. So that's where I got dropped off after school. So spent so much time with them. But in many respects, like had been too busy in my young adult and adult life to really hear the stories. And so I'm kind of hearing this all anew now in her hospital room. And she's telling me about how in 1968 that small farming community had fallen on hard financial times. And not in the same way where like some communities dried up because the mill closed. Here, there was almost like um an economic boom where uh some of the federal agencies that existed in Washington, D.C. had now transitioned to Gathersburg. Uh, a lot of the folks who had grown up on the farm, there's some farm consolidation in the area. Uh, a lot of families didn't want that next generation to be farmers, and so they were sending people into professional schools into DC, to Baltimore, and and Philadelphia. And so you just didn't have that next generation uh in the in the community to support um this sort of a church. So had far fallen on hard financial times, and they were trying to figure out their way forward. And it was really interesting amongst the congregation, there were different beliefs about the path forward. Some thought, stay on the course, right? We've been able to do this dutifully on our own for 100 years. Let's continue the path that we're on. Others thought, you know, we need to merge this congregation. There's some black congregations, you know, north of us, some south of us. Uh, we can, we can maybe that's the right path. And then there were others who suggested that there were closer congregations, and closer both in proximity and in lifestyle, right? Also farming, also, um, and it just so happened that those congregations happened to be white. Uh, in this little small farming community, this Michel cause of America, you had a northern, historically northern white community church and a southern church where the Methodist Episcopal Church had split over the issue of slavery. And so one night in April, uh, Pleasant View, which is the church that my great-great-grandparents founded back in the 1860s, had this all call. Everyone's in the room, they're they're debating which direction they should go, over a meal, of course, in true black church fashion. And in the middle of that debate, they literally get the knock at the door, and news is delivered that Dr. King has been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. So this conversation is happening on April 4th, 1968. And of course, the meeting, you know, dissolves and all kinds of emotion. But they decided that they couldn't take a vote that night. And I thought, hearing this from my grandmother, that that meant that a vote wouldn't be taken, right? Like it would be very easy to put this whole concept on pause and say, not right now, we'll come back to this later. But what was amazing to me is that shortly thereafter, not just Pleasant View, but Pleasant View, McDonald Chapel, and Hunting Hill, those two other white congregations all gathered. They took a vote, and the majority of the representatives voted for those three congregations to merge. In April of 1968, in the wake of Dr. King's assassination, as riots erupted and cities burned across the country, these three little Methodist churches decided that they were going to take on the audacious task of figuring out how to bind together their three unique histories, identities, cultures. And um what was so striking for me, Alicia, was hearing it from my grandmother. Right? So imagine my grandmother, and she's a she was a storyteller, right? So she was working up in her crescendo moment, and as she's about to tell me, right, she's about to tell me that these three churches merge, I interrupt her and I say, those three churches didn't merge, did they? And she's like, of course they did, you dummy. Like, yes, the three churches, not only because you could tell the direction of her story, but what's crazy is that that merged congregation, which becomes this church called Fairhaven, that's where I grew up. That's the church I was baptized in, that's the church I went to Sunday school at, that's where I'm in vacation Bible school. And what was so striking, and this is the power of history, is that I never had to think about the fact that it was created. Yeah. Right? Like I just showed up when I came along, it was there. They had decided, they had figured out all the things that needed figuring. And I got to play with my friends of every shade of the rainbow and and call it every day. And what became apparent was that there were people like my grandmother, there were these radicals, right? Most of them that leading the charge were women who had to figure out how to, you know, figure out what the church service is going to look like and figure out which hymn you're gonna use, and figure out what the pews are gonna look like, and who's gonna lead the organization and how long service is gonna be and which preaching style. And it's it made me realize that those things that are intentionally created, right, at some point have to be maintained and have to be intentionally kept.

unknown 17:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

That's the power of this arc uh and this story.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah. And as much as this is about looking back at at place and community and and kind of elevating this beautiful uh history, you're not without history yourself. And you were part of uh a historic campaign in 2008. So I can't let you go without asking you about your journey into joining the Obama presidential campaign. So can you talk a little bit about how you how you came to to join the the Obama presidential campaign in 2008?

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Yeah, you know, so I I guess I have a pensions for leaving things, turns out at least as you as you say that and I reflect on some of your questions. So I happened to be um a third year in law school, yeah, yeah, law school, and was presented with an opportunity to join the campaign. The opportunity came to me later than I had hoped for it. I I really wanted to take off that summer between 2L year and 3L year, and I was hoping that the campaign would want me then. They did not want me then. Uh, but I'm I'm grateful for the offer that I got when I got it. And it just so happened, though I was living in uh New Haven, Connecticut, that the job offer was in Las Vegas, Nevada. And so I I had first been introduced to Barack Obama at the same time, kind of the country was in 2004 when he gave that uh DNC convention speech in Boston. I was there, I was in the convention hall, and what struck me so much was how much he reminded me of my dad. And uh my dad's a Methodist pastor and would whip up these sermons calling on our better angels to be and you know, all of what we could be when we recognize that we're part of a single garment. And and so when he said that there were no red states and no blue states, and it just resonated with me. And when people were weeping on each other's shoulders, it reminded me of sitting in the back pew, you know, watching the congregants respond to some of my dad's messages. And so I said prophetically, you know, I'll help that man run for president. I just thought it was gonna be, you know, two decades, not three years later. So anyway, I was presented with this opportunity. I was like, he's gonna lose. If you remember that point in the primary, uh, Barack Obama was 40 points down to the juggernaut, Hillary Clinton. And I'm in law school, I can't get my money back, I can't defer. But I thought that this was kind of the movement of our generation, and I just didn't want to miss it. And so I moonlighted. I was, I moved, I accepted the opportunity, I moved to Las Vegas, I worked, I ran uh the North Las Vegas caucuses, and uh and I stayed enrolled. And so I would, you know, very early in the morning and very late at night, and sometimes I'd have to get on the plane and go back to Connecticut, but um, but was able to navigate it and then five additional primary states ultimately to become uh the National Voter Registration Director uh for the general election and never thought, for oddly, never really thought about working in the administration. Just sort of saw my responsibility to try and help him get elected, um, you know, make make try and make a little history along the way, and then was just so honored and blessed uh when the opportunity presented itself to go work in the White House Council's office. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Well, and I think, at least for me reading this, it was it was uh very clear that you were operating in two very distinct historic spaces, but that they were, they were intertwined. And so uh curious, you know, what what that brought up for you? What was the experience like of straddling two historic moments, talking to your grandmother about the past, while kind of also, at least briefly, I know you did end up leaving the White House, but briefly trying to kind of straddle both worlds. What was that? What was that like and what did that bring up for you?

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah. Even greater convergence, Lisa. So I got to go back to Chicago uh for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center. And what's crazy is that the day of the opening ceremonies for the presidential center were on what would have been my grandmother's 108th birthday. Oh so I'm just a mess. Yeah. Right? I'm just sobbing in the back. And people are like, oh, yeah, this is very emotional. I'm like, no, you don't get all of the emotion, all the convergence. Because then two days later, uh, you know, I flew back to DC and we reopened Pleasant View. So originally dedicated in 1868 for with $54, they bought that land, and we rebuilt my grandma's one room schoolhouse and we rebuilt the social hall and the little church and the cemetery plot. And so for the a hundred 58th anniversary, we reopened Pleasant View two days after they opened the presidential. And so what it what it struck for me was that these are just two monuments of hope, right? One on the south side of Chicago and one in Gaitersburg, sort of acknowledging its history of Quince Orkshirt. And it reminded us that like this doesn't happen on its own. That you know, generations of people have to pick up this mantle of community or democracy and sort of the capacity for us to sort of recognize humanity in one in each other and to rededicate to these ideas, right? Like this work does not end. I often have conversations with folks who are exhausted, that you know are seeking the mountaintop moment. And the realization is we we recognize that we are just temporary stewards of these ideas and that we have to continue to pass them forward.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yeah. Well, and that actually kind of leads me to my my next question, which is you you end this the book discussing kind of the importance of place. And so can you talk about how this project influenced how you think about place and historical memory?

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Yeah. I didn't think, like I say, this isn't what I picked. I think it picked me in the same way that I feel like the ancestors are always calling. It's always, they're always calling. Uh they were probably calling me earlier. I dodged the dodged the call as best I could. Uh, and this time I finally finally answered. My grandmother, when she passed, for not to spoil it, folks to appreciate the book, but she lived 11 years after um after I went into that hospital room, right? So she was 95 when I went in. She died just shy of her 107th birthday. And when she passed, she was still a trustee of Pleasant View. Uh, and so I now sit in her trustees seat. So this idea of you know the importance of that institution in this place with the responsibility of articulating and educating and preserving its historical experience for those that attended the school and attended the church, but in a really beautiful way for the new demography that is there, right? Like, how do you build a relationship to a community that has transitioned really significantly, but give them opportunity to feel as though their story is part of this story. And I think that that's the importance of place. You know, when I'm critical of places that sort of aren't willing to acknowledge the history, they have to understand that this, these are just foundations, these are just tent poles, right, to build upon. And and so there's nothing lost by being able to acknowledge the past. So really, there's usually only something gained to be able to say that we build upon this sort of a foundation. And um, which I find to be really beautiful and what we've seen in this community is that people want to people want to understand where they're from, they want to feel connected, they want to feel rooted in something, even if they're not generationally tied to it. And sort of giving them this kind of a story allows them to plug in, to tell the story themselves as if it was their own.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Yeah. Well, and what do you hope people take away from your book?

SPEAKER_00 25:18

I hope that there's three things. Uh, I would love for people to take away from this experience. One, this is my PSA, Alicia. Like, again, I had this tremendous, unexpected opportunity to go and sit with my 95-year-old grandmother. I want people to make time, right? Don't take time, but make time. We can't wait for time. And I can't tell you I've been on this book tour. How many people come up to me and say, I was supposed to do that, right? My grandmother, loved one, whomever passed before I had the opportunity to collect the stories. And so do it. And then also, you don't have it doesn't just have to be sort of a loved one or a generational connection. My grandfather died before I ever had the, you know, he died in 1991, before the long before this product ever began. But someone in our church kindly sat down with him and recorded him, asked him questions for two hours, and I found those tapes. And that's part of what you know appears in in this book. So it doesn't just happen to be your grandfather. There's someone else, an elder of the community, like do this as a service for others. So I think that's one I want people to feel that these stories are intended to be they're a gift to others, you know, for those that don't have them. But if you have that opportunity, make make the time to do that work. The second is this point that I'm making about the responsibility that we have, right? That in these moments of chaos, which some people would describe us in, these moments of exhaustion, I think first is to understand that often that's intentional. Right. We uh by design, in moments of chaos, we our reaction often is to withdraw. That's to go into the four corners of the world that uh that we can control. And I want people to understand that the opposite of chaos is not control, it is connection. We need to connect to actually respond to the chaos. Control and withdraw uh won't actually navigate us through. And then the last piece is like this idea of hope. I want people to to have one of the questions that I ask people is what's too precious to lose for you? And the number one answer that I've experienced is hope or some derivation thereof. And what people also need to realize is that hope is regenerative. Like hope uh relies on evidence of activity, uh demonstration that our small actions still matter. And so then that gets to this responsibility, right? Opportunity, accountability piece that these um these changes that we hope to see in the world, right? This mission that we're on to build community or build economic, racial, and social justice, right? That all requires us to live on this wheel of hope. Also requires us to be the demonstrations and the evidence, um, because then we can be our own demonstrations of hope and hope for someone else.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Wonderful. And where should people go when they finish the book and they want to learn more about you and the work that you do?

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Yeah, I would love to be in in conversation with folks. They can go to jasongreenbook.com and find out about where, you know, any stops that we have on the book tour and find out about other, you know, my other ramblings and ruminations um on uh at the website. They can also go to uh Jason Gerrard Green on Instagram or LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Lovely. And before I let you go, I feel like we've only scratched the surface, but is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd like future readers to know?

SPEAKER_00 28:50

I'm so excited for uh your listeners to check out this book. Um ultimately it is a it's my own interrogation of my relationships, my relationships with family, my relationship with community. And I think that given where we are, and that we talked about the chaos and chaotic times, I really hope that people are able to sit with this book and see it as the the balm for our mo for the time that we're in, as an opportunity to look to our past. I think you said this well. It's an opportunity to look to our past, but to extract lessons that will allow us to move forward together. Lovely.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Well, to the listeners out there, definitely consider grabbing a copy of Too Precious to Lose for a powerful example of the power of preserving memory and the unexpected stories the archives hold. Thank you again, Jason.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Thank you, Lisa. Appreciate you so much.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

My thanks again to Jason for spending his time with me. If you are looking for a book that demonstrates oral history done well, or have any interest in black history or historical memory, then pick up a copy of Too Precious to Lose. Thanks, peeps. I'll see you next time. Thanks for sitting down with me as I explored this chapter of American history. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and share with your friends. I look forward to our next cup of coffee together.