By Jamie McCrary

Last July 4, as DC’s annual fireworks display burst over the National Mall, an 11-year-old boy lost his life.

Davon McNeal, who was visiting family in Anacostia, was fatally struck by a bullet in crossfire from a neighborhood shooting. He was coming from a Stop the Violence cookout that his mother, who works as a city violence interrupter, helped organize. Davon was shot as he stepped from their car.

"This is ridiculous," John Ayala, Davon’s grandfather, told National Public Radio. “Our babies are being gunned down. This has got to stop."

Davon was one of at least six children killed by gun violence across the country that weekend, and one of four killed in DC during the first few days of July 2020. This aligns with an alarming trend seen in 2020, which, according to the Gun Violence Archive, was the deadliest year for gun violence in two decades.

COVID-19, which confined many to already volatile home and neighborhood environments, helped fuel this uptick in violence. The country’s largest cities, like Atlanta or Los Angeles, suffered the highest spike, at 30%. And like COVID-19 itself, this has disproportionately affected our nation’s Black and Brown communities.

This spring, DC residents Mary Grace and Al Rook leveraged philanthropy to respond. The couple was deeply troubled by this spike in violence in our community. As a magistrate judge for DC’s Superior Court, Mary Grace has seen the impact of violence on children and families, and felt she needed to do something.

After consulting Crystal McNeal, Davon’s mother, the Rooks founded the Davon McNeal Memorial Fund at the Greater Washington Community Foundation. Established in April 2021, the Fund aims to give at-risk youth in Wards 7 and 8 a respite from potential violence through pro-social programs in sports, the arts, and education. The Rooks hope this Memorial Fund will also help to increase awareness about community violence, which Al says is lacking, due in part to “a real dichotomy between one side of the river and the other,” which ultimately fuels this violence.

“Mary Grace and I believe that our community can step up and help to provide support and resources that will create safe and healing spaces for kids,” Al says. “The constant exposure to violence and resulting trauma that [these] young children face impacts them in so many ways.”

The Davon McNeal Memorial Fund builds on a history at The Community Foundation of addressing violence in the Greater Washington region. From 2013-2018, we administered the City Fund, established with DC government to invest $15 million in programs focused on reducing incidents of violent crime, and combating domestic violence and human trafficking. More recently, we partnered with the Public Welfare Foundation on the DC Fund for Just and Peaceful Neighborhoods, which supported nonprofits working to transform the criminal justice system and implementing violence intervention and prevention services in DC.

Other efforts include supporting the implementation of a pilot program targeting a small set of District neighborhoods using the Cure Violence Methodology, partnering with the City on The Navy Yard Relief Fund in 2013, and, most recently, becoming the fiscal sponsor to the Peace for DC Fund. Peace for DC will build community capacity and fund evidence-based gun violence intervention solutions to drastically reduce DC homicides over the next 5 years—and help bring racial and economic justice to DC’s most under-resourced communities.

We’re proud to support these anti-violence efforts as they continue. However—it is important that we also acknowledge that this violence derives from a longer and more protracted history that is embedded in American culture.

Systemic racism, disinvestment, economic exclusion and other social determinants reside at the heart of generations of targeted violence against BIPOC communities. Our will and capacity to address these issues will directly impact our collective efforts to eradicate this kind and all forms of violence from our city. In the face of these challenges we remain committed to finding real solutions and mobilizing our community to support those most affected by this public crisis.

A little over a year has passed since Davon McNeal lost his life, and while the pain of this loss ensues, so does our hope for a brighter future. We hope you’ll join us in honoring his legacy and re-imaging our community as a place free from the painful binds of violence and trauma.

For more information on The Community Foundation’s anti-violence initiatives and impact funds, visit https://www.thecommunityfoundation.org/grantmaking