A damaged market

The Congress Public Market was an institution in the Hill, a full grocery store operating there since 1905.

Alan Rice, a high school senior at the time, has vivid memories of the vandalism at the grocery when the riot erupted on Aug. 19.

“Our store was destroyed from front to back. My father was so heartbroken. Everything was smashed,” he said. With the front windows broken, it was wide open to looters.

“When someone breaks into your house, you have that feeling of violation,” Rice said.

He said everyone knew his father, Herbert Rice.

“My father was much beloved by the community. We didn’t feel that it was people in the neighborhood that did most of the damage. It was outside influences that came in,” Rice said in an interview at the Amity Meat Center on Lucy Street in Woodbridge, the third-generation family business Rice runs with his sister, Judy Rice Panagrossi.

Rice said transportation 50 years ago wasn’t as easy as it is now, and a local grocery store provided a real service, particularly since the employees made home deliveries.

“Up until the last day we were there, my dad gave credit,” Rice remembered.

“I don’t remember any stress from our customers. There were wonderful families around us. They really kept the community going,” he said, listing some of them, including Police Commissioner Tony Dawson’s parents.

After the riot, however,