Yall stay off dope, you hear me? Yall stay off dope. Stay away from that mess. And stay in school. Stay in school.
– Smokey Pebbles, drug dealer in “His Mother’s House,” while throwing change towards children.
In Lost in the City, Edward P. Jones explores the lives of various characters living in Washington, D.C. at all stages of life, from the young Betsy Ann of “The Girl Who Raised Pigeons” to with the elderly title character of “Marie.” Many, if not all, of the characters have in some way experienced the effect of some form of education. Some have just started elementary school. Some have dropped out of high school. Some have completed higher educations at top-tier universities. Others have received no formal education at all.
Set in the latter half of the twentieth century, Lost in the City registers the effects of school desegregation from previous decades—a move that radically altered U.S. public education. In exploring this history, several specific schools repeatedly mentioned in Lost in the City caught our attention: Walker-Jones Education Campus, Cardozo High, Dunbar High, and Howard University. These institutions remain as important contributors to the area’s Black history and culture, as well as literal landmarks in the D.C. area.
The public education system in Washington, D.C. shapes the characters’ lives in Lost in the City. Researching the younger children attending elementary school at Walker-Jones, for example, highlights the pervasive influence of economic power in a setting that would ideally offer equal opportunities to all students. However, while schools bring together diverse groups of individuals, a resulting disconnect between home and school may create tension, as seen among Cardozo High School students. Cardozo signifies a later stage in academic and social development, and its students represent a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, with consequences that Jones explores in relation to the students’ home lives. Education, and the opportunities that schooling can offer, also manifest themselves in Dunbar High School’s history of producing Black academic excellence. As for higher education, historically Black universities such as Howard University serve as prime examples of resistance to a historically white American school system, and Jones explores the connections between that institutional resistance and some of his characters’ desires to challenge their family’s traditional values. Ultimately, education molds the individual characters of Lost in the City, impacting not only their lives, but also their surrounding communities and neighborhoods.
