Fort Dupont Park Series 2020

The National Park Service hosted the 2020 Fort Dupont Summer Concert Series, celebrating 48 years of great music and entertainment. Although the entire world has been impacted by the Coronavirus which had prevented everyone from gathering together on the grassy knolls and under the beautiful starlit nights. Despite everything going on, they were able to bring the thrill with Soul, HipHop, Go-Go, Funk, and Jazz musicians, along with sounds by DC’s best DJs!!! to you in the safety of your homes or wherever you may be on this evening and beyond for FREE!

The live watch party took place every Saturday from August 22nd to September 19th on fortdupontparkconcerts.live. The event had special performances by We Are One X-perience Band, Bid Daddy Kane and DJ Kool, Kindred and the Family Soul, Backyard Band, and Black Alley Band, just to name a few.

The Fort Dupont Summer Concert Series is an annual celebration that brings together Greater Washington area communities to enjoy incredible music from national, regional, and local artists. The National Park Service continues the series’ tradition this summer and looks forward to sharing the concert series with viewers across the country. Concerts will not be performed live at the amphitheater this year.

Meet Kym Elder

Meet Kim Elder, she is the new Program Manager for the Civil War Defenses of Washington, a position where Elder will oversee a complex system of National Park Service-managed Civil War fortifications in the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia built to defend the city of Washington and specifically the White House from Confederate attack.

Elder is a proud Washington, born and raised in Southeast, DC. After graduating from Norfolk State Univerity, Elder received a job opportunity with the National Park Sevice and has been working in the bureau ever since. She talked about how she began working for NPS and mentioned that she is a Second-Generation National Park Service Ranger, taking after her mother who also had also worked for the NPS. Being a hardworking woman that she is, Elder managed to build up her experience working with NPS by also being involved in her community and talking to students in school.

About Fort Dupont

Fort Dupont Park is one of eight Civil War Defenses of Washington sites managed by National Capital Parks-East. The Civil War Defenses of Washington is administered by the National Park Service as a program overseeing the 156-year-old remnants of Civil War fortifications that once encircled the nation’s capital —protecting the union city against a Confederate Army attack.

Fort Dupont was commenced between October and December of 1861, and completed in the spring of 1862. Like most of the older works, it underwent some modifications between 1861 and 1865. In the line concept of fortifications over the Anacostia River, it functioned to cover the gap in the fortified ridge between Forts Mahan and Miegs. Fort Dupont Park Summer Concert Series History: Summer In the Parks

From 1968 until 1976, the National Park Service ran a popular public program series known as Summer in the Parks. Designed primarily to bring underserved African American youth and other diverse audiences into the District of Columbia’s parklands, Summer in the Parks was free and occurred at several NPS-administered sites. Under Rock Creek Park jurisdiction, events occurred regularly at Carter Barron Amphitheatre, Meridian Hill Park, Fort Reno Park, and P Street Beach, a natural amphitheater-like area on Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway bordering the creek and P Street NW. While the program was being planned prior to the April 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it did gain stronger impetus from the tragic event; Summer in the Parks began at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and it was designed to decrease civil tension through arts and nature, to “draw young people out of the streets and into the parks,” noted the Washington Post at the time.