No Return of the Queen for SE Neighborhood

Queen Elizabeth II did not take a stroll along Queen Stroll Place SE this time. And that's too bad. She'd surely have raised a royal eyebrow at the changes on the D.C. street since she toured it in 1991.

For one thing, a knock on the door where Alice Frazier lived would go unanswered. The woman who crushed royal etiquette by hugging the queen of England died in 2005. Frazier, 81, had Alzheimer's and, near the end of her life, no memory of the royal house call that had made her America's queen of Southern hospitality.

Elizabeth went to the Marshall Heights neighborhood that day 16 years ago mostly to see Frazier's house. She wanted to know more about a program that made homeownership possible for low- to moderate-income residents such as Frazier, who was a cook at the time. The queen was said to have been impressed by the District's concern for the less fortunate and expressed hope that similar housing programs could be started in her country. After she left, the D.C. Council voted to rename the street Queen Stroll Place.

Today, the modest duplex stands vacant. When Frazier got sick and was unable to work, she fell behind in her mortgage payments and was forced to move in 2003. So much for concern for the poor.

"The Queen Stroll place was going up for foreclosure, so we just packed up and left before it went," Frazier's daughter Betty Queen told me. "Our family split up, and for the first six months, most of us lived with different relatives in Prince George's County." Frazier eventually moved into a nursing home, where she died. Queen lives in a trailer park in Dudley, N.C.

Elizabeth might want to know that, despite the magic moments of hugs and hearty welcomes, life on Queen Stroll did not turn out to be a fairy tale come true.

"Not much changed after she was gone," said Edward Holloway, a recycling truck driver who has lived on the street for 45 years. "People still getting shot. Not enough recreation programs for the kids. No speed bumps to keep the car thieves from speeding up and down the street. Too many kids out of school. Too many men out of work."

In her remarks on this year's celebration of Jamestown's 400th anniversary, Elizabeth spoke of "three great civilizations" -- Western European, Native American and African -- coming together and starting "a train of events which continues to have a profound social impact not only in the United States but also in the United Kingdom and Europe."

Slavery was one of the products of those events, and the queen would have felt its lingering impact immediately had she taken the stroll: The concentrations of poverty and black children in Ward 7, where the street is located, are among the highest in the city. A recent report by the Children's Advocacy Roundtable found that 32 percent of District children live in poverty -- twice the national average -- and that one out of two is at risk of hunger.

"You can say that black people are doing it to themselves, but that's not the whole story," said Gregory Holloway, 34, a construction worker and Ed Holloway's brother. "Look at it like this: If white kids were going hungry and getting shot to death, everybody would be concerned and trying to stop it, no matter what."

The most obvious sign of change along Queen Stroll is an upscale condominium complex where the crime-ridden Eastgate apartment complex once stood. The new homes are expected to cost $300,000 to $550,000, with a few set aside for low-income residents who have good credit and no police record.

"I think it's getting better around here," said Dana Clark, 32, an employee at the neighborhood Dollar Plus store who used to live in Eastgate. "I want to move into one of the new condos, and I know a lot of people I grew up with would, too, except most of them are locked up or dead."

When Drake Place SE was renamed Queen Stroll, new street signs were placed at each intersection along the four-block stretch. Only one sign remains.

"I think some people were disappointed that Queen Stroll was never made fit for a queen," said Sherry Whitmore, who has lived on the street since 1990. "So they just took her signs down and changed the street name back to the way it was."

E-mail:milloyc@washpost.com