George Mason University: Black Mobility in Arlington County, VA
Funded by: Arlington County Historic Preservation Fund Grant, Mason Exhibitions, and Provisions Research Center for Art and Social Change.
Black Mobility Archive: Arlington, VA
The “Black Mobility Archive: Arlington, VA” catalogs and organizes materials and information that highlight significant events and circumstances in Arlington’s Black community. From enslavement and the birth of a Black population in Arlington to the present, the content focuses on the physical, spiritual, perpetual, and ephemeral movement of Black people in Arlington County. This is a research project that mines select archives to determine the historic location, positionality, and embodiment of Black people within and among the physical and cultural landscape of Arlington County, VA.
The accumulated research will make accessible a curated archive of data that represents Black mobility, migration, and displacement. This data resource will form the research corpus for commissioning future contemporary art projects that visually interpret the data collected.
Black Mobility
This project defines BLACK MOBILITY as more than physical movement. It also encapsulates the ability to create emotional, social, political, and economic opportunities to move. BLACK MOBILITY embodies the ability for Black people to navigate a literal and metaphorical terrain, and to thrive. Our research looks at stories from 1619 to the present day. However, this is not intended to be a comprehensive repository of historic and contemporary information.
We also emphasize that Arlington’s current physical borders have changed over time, due to retrocession and other state-imposed land ordinances. This affects the geographies and stories of modern-day Washington, DC and Alexandria, VA. As a result, historical documents dated before 1846 cited as Alexandria and Washington, DC are referencing the present-day Arlington County, VA.
