Charlene Drew Jarvis
A Dose of Science in Politics
Charlene Drew Jarvis will never forget the day in 1968 when her neighborhood commercial corridor burned to the ground. She was 27, studying toward her PhD in neuropsychology at the University of Maryland, and lived a block off the 14th Street corridor. When she headed out to run some errands, she found, to her sheer amazement, looting, fires, and pandemonium everywhere. Unbeknownst to her, Dr. King had just been assassinated.
Police were hopeless to stop the chaos. Mayor Washington had said that no looters should be shot. She passed a looter who dropped a stolen sneaker on his way out of a shoe store. A standing police officer shrugged and said: “You dropped something.” She rushed to collect her two children from daycare. When she got home, she watched from her balcony as smoke belched out of the mostly Black-owned stores up and down 14th Street.
She kept at her brain research studies for several more years. But she knew, deep down, her calling in life would be to rebuild what was lost on that day.
Leadership runs in her family. Her father, Dr. Charles Drew, pioneered blood banking and, in the 1940s, was one of the country’s few Black surgeons. He died tragically in a car accident when Charlene was only 8 years old. His mantra was “Excellence of performance will overcome any artificial barriers created by men.” Few medical colleges enrolled and trained Black students. He saw to it that Howard University would produce the first generation of outstanding Black physicians. By 1950, he had trained most of the country’s Black surgeons.
Her mother was a strong, independent woman who had two master’s degrees under her belt before marrying Dr. Drew. Charlene chose to attend Oberlin college because of its history tearing down barriers; it was among the first to admit Black students and women. She walked away from neuroscience in 1978 to run for DC Council. She was restless for impact. Scientific research can take decades before culminating in meaningful results. Politics, she thought, could deliver and scale change more quickly. Ten years after the riots, she was anxious to get rebuilding already. When she won, she was comfortably installed right where she wanted—at the helm, as Chair, of the Committee on Economic Development.
Under her careful hand, she sculpted the foundation of the city’s economic renaissance. She crafted the legislation that paved the way for the Convention Center and the arena in Gallery Place. The city didn’t have deep coffers for lavish appropriations.
Her genius was in installing instruments and organizational structures that leveraged sustainable funds beyond general tax revenue. Self-financed, independent Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) would keep commercial corridors clean and safe. Tax Incremental Finance (TIFs) arrangements meant that developers could use future tax receipts from underutilized land to cover some of the cost of developing that land.
The federal Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) had just been passed in Congress in the late 1970s, forcing banks to draw up plans to invest in underserved communities. Charlene would leverage that to full effect. The National Capital Revitalization Corporation (NCRC) was created to receive money from private entities like banks and then lend to or invest in local businesses.
She recalls one contentious meeting with a southern, white, male banker who needed her approval for a merger with a DC bank. Only if he agreed to offer loans to small local businesses, she demanded. He agreed, without offering this Black female elected official the respect of looking her in the eye. He turned instead to her male staffer.
Just as the economic development flywheel began its work, a young Adrian Fenty challenged her in a primary and won her Council seat in 2000. She says she couldn’t stop smiling when she went home that election night. For the previous four years, she had been working two jobs, one on the Council and the other as President of Southeastern University. She was exhausted and ready for a break.
She could now plow her energy into Southeastern, which specialized in business education for underserved minorities and foreign students. Her economic development acumen came in handy. The university went under after the Great Recession when foreign student enrollment plummeted, but she‘s still involved in education and the DC community. She’s a senior advisor for KIPP Charter School and serves on the Board of the Washington Housing Conservancy. She remains a generous stateswoman who has everyone’s ear.
At heart, Charlene is a scientist. She seeks truth. Politics is too often a profession of bending the truth to fit a hidden agenda. She brought respect—and veracity—to DC politics at a time when her city was on the brink. She did a great job rebuilding, too. ” ■
