Black Mobility Archive: Arlington, VA

A HISTORICAL TIMELINE OF ARLINGTON:

1619: Arrival of first enslaved people in VA.

1662: Virginia General Assembly rules the child of an enslaved mother inherits her status.

1669: John Alexander purchased The Howson Patent (Alexander’s own land in Arlington until 1903).

• Origins of Green Valley Neighborhood.

1691: Virginia General Assembly orders freed slaves to leave the state within 6 months of gaining freedom.

1705: Virginia Slave Codes passed.

1731: Arlington is incorporated into Prince William County.

1732: Truro Parish was created by the General Assembly of Virginia.

• The Anglican church was the established religion of the Colony of Virginia from 1619 – 1776.

1740: The Falls tobacco warehouse is built at the mouth of Pimmit Run (The Bottom) (Chain Bridge today). Tobacco is the major crop in Arlington.

1742: Arlington is incorporated into Fairfax County.

1801-1847: Before Arlington County was established, it was “Alexandria County, DC.”

• MD and VA gave 100 square miles combined to constitute DC (69 sq miles from MD, 31 sq miles from VA) officially enacted February 27, 1801.
• Town of Alexandria was absorbed into DC.
  • Alexandria was the county seat of Fairfax County so the state of VA had to move the county seat and courthouse further inland away from DC.
  • Alexandria residents lost their VA state citizenship and could no longer vote in Congressional or Presidential Elections (since DC isn’t a state).
• It was decided that DC residents would not be allowed to vote, and the mayor/key members of DC government would be appointed by the President and Congress.
• Construction of public buildings was prohibited in Alexandria (1791), so Alexandria couldn’t compete with Georgetown and other ports for commercial traffic. The slave trade is what thrived in Alexandria.

1807: Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves signed by Thomas Jefferson.

• Slave ships illegally continued to bring their human cargo to U.S. ports, and American newspapers continued reporting on the occasional capture of a slave ship into the 1840s. (Two ships, the Wanderer and the Clotilde, are reported to have brought slaves to the United States well into the 1850s.) As with the passage of most laws, those who would break the law don’t end their criminal deeds; instead a black market thrives.

October 7, 1844: Green Valley Black Neighborhood opened.

• Levi Jones (a free black man) purchased 15 acres from Elizabeth Baggot to be near his enslaved wife Sarah Ann Gardener. The local community began to grow as the Jones family began selling some of their property to other black families.
• Plantation owner, Alexander Frazier, enslaves Sarah and their growing family. After the Civil War, the family helps develop Nauck/Green Valley as an African American community.
• First black churches and schools established in Green Valley.

1846: Retrocession Bill passed on July 9, 1846.

• Not necessarily only because of the slave trade controversy

  • The biggest motivator for the citizens of Alexandria to return to their home state may have been the Constitutional neglect they experienced while being under the rule of the District of Columbia. The battle for equal representation in Congress and adequate home rule in the District would continue for decades after the retrocession of 1846. Alexandrians were the first to successfully fight for their rights, even if it meant leaving the District altogether.

• After retrocession passed, the VA boundary moved back to the original line George Washington selected in 1791. The boundary between VA and MD was determined by the “high water” mark. In other words, Maryland (and, later, D.C) owned the river and islands, while Virginia owned everything that was connected to its mainland.

  • As water levels changed due to natural and man-made causes, the boundary line was disputed until 1930-1940.

    • The Federal Gov wanted Reagan National Airport and GW Memorial Parkway.

1854: “The Bottom” established.

• One of the earliest documented small black communities in Arlington.

1861: Civil War begins.

1862: District of Columbia Compensated Manumission Act passed.

• Freeing enslaved people in DC and reimbursing the enslavers for the losses of “property.”

1863: Emancipation Proclamation passed.

• Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it did fundamentally transform the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom.

• Proclamation announced the acceptance of Black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

1863: Freedman’s Village established.

• A camp created by the US Military to relieve overcrowding/poor conditions in DC camps for more than 1,000 freed slaves, was constructed on part of the Arlington National Cemetery. More than 3,800 former slaves are buried in the cemetery.

  • Village was a planned community with roads, white-washed clapboard duplexes, vocational schools, and a hospital. It became a showplace where officials could demonstrate their care for the formerly enslaved to visiting foreign dignitaries.

• Sojourner Truth resided in Freedman’s Village for approximately a year, and worked to assist villagers with access to information. During that time, Sojourner Truth worked for the National Freedman’s Relief Association. She counseled the villagers on self-care and self-maintenance, instructed the women in domestic chores, preached the gospel, helped find work for the unemployed, and taught residents how to demand their basic human rights be represented and respected.

• “Churches, fraternal organizations like the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, which hosted social events, provided burial services, and organized mutual aid funds. Some residents bought their homes from the government, and others built new houses and farms.”

1865: Civil War Ends, 13th amendment abolishing slavery is enacted by Congress.

1867: 837 inhabitants reported at Freedman’s Village.

1870: Alexandria County and the City of Alexandria were formally separated and regular elections were held by a post-Civil War government.

1874: John D. Nauck Jr. of Washington DC bought Green Valley property and subdivided to Black residents.

1880’s: Efforts to close Freedman’s Village increase.

• Federal actors and land developers pushed Congress to close the community so the land could be used for other purposes. Many white Arlingtonians joined the effort, eager to reduce local Black political power. White politicians and newspapers mischaracterized the community as impoverished and dependent on government aid.

1880: Johnson’s Hill Neighborhood Established.

• The white Johnston family began selling lots to African Americans leaving Freedman's Village.

1887: Freedman’s Village Evictions begin.

• Although many had bought their homes, the government now insisted that the Village had been created with the understanding that residents must “move when required.”

1892: Land Ownership began being divided by race.

• Prior to this, race was not disclosed.

• Records at Courthouses - not sure if are digitized or have to be visited in person.

  • Using these names, you can go to census records and look for the same names prior to 1892.

1900: Freedman’s Village Closed, some residents paid off to leave.

Early 1900’s: Queen City Opens in East Arlington.

• Two acres of land were purchased by the Mount Olive Baptist Church to create a thriving community.

1920: Alexandria County was renamed “Arlington County” to eliminate the confusion between these two adjacent jurisdictions.

• The name “Arlington” was chosen because General Robert E. Lee’s home of that name is located in the County, on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.

1930's: Wall erected to divide the white Waycroft-Woodlawn subdivision from the black Hall’s Hill neighborhood

1931-32: Route 50 is built and the streetcars between Washington D.C. and Mount Vernon are shut down, cementing the county’s racial divides.

1932: Hoffman-Boston Junior High School opened and would later become a high school. Up until this point, Black students’ education ended after primary school.

1932: After switching from an appointed County Board to an elected one, Dr. Edward T. Morton, the county’s first Black physician, became one of the first Black Arlingtonians to run for office. (It took 55 years for a Black candidate to win a County Board election.)

December 1935: The D.C.-Virginia Boundary Commission ruled in favor of VA that the boundary be set at the current low-water marker instead of the original marker determined by GW.

1940: Census records show 903 people living in 218 residences in the whole of East Arlington.

September 1941: Pentagon construction displaced 225 African-American families, or 810 people. They were relocated to two trailer camps near Columbia Pike and in Green Valley.

1942: Federal government exercise eminent domain to take over Queen City/East Arlington.

• Residents were given four to six weeks to leave their homes in an already tight housing market, and African Americans had even fewer housing options than whites.

• Queen City did not have paved streets or running water, so property values were lower.

• The Washington Post remarked that Arlington County was “growing so rapidly that up-to-date statistics are impossible to obtain.” It was “the smallest, most thickly populated, and among the richest and greatest revenue producing counties in the State of Virginia.”

• Eleanor Roosevelt and the House Military Affairs Committee set up temporary trailers in nearby Green Valley and Johnson’s Hill - but not before many families lost all their possessions because they had no safe place to store them.

1943: Without public transit, and with lower rates of car ownership, Black residents founded Friendly Cab in Green Valley and Crown Cab in Hall’s Hill to connect their communities to the region.

October 1945: President Truman signed the law stating the boundary between D.C. and Virginia as the present day “mean high water mark.” All of the land on the Virginia side of the Potomac – including land that had been created by filling in the edges of the river for the Pentagon – would be part of Virginia. Meanwhile, the airport would be treated as a Federal reservation inside Virginia. Basically, Virginia got the land and the right to tax it, with some exceptions.

1946: D.C. ruled that Arlington students attending D.C. schools would have to pay tuition. Many Black Arlingtonians sent their kids to D.C. schools because they had more resources than the county’s segregated public schools.

1947: Constance Carter sued the Arlington School Board because facilities at the all-Black Hoffman-Boston High School were unequal to those at the all-white Washington-Lee High School.

1950: A federal judge reversed the district court’s ruling in favor of the School Board. The county was forced to invest in segregated Black schools and Black teachers were given the same salary as white instructors.

1951: Fire Station 8, the all Black-volunteer fire station that served Black communities, received its first county-paid firefighter — 10 years after the other stations.

1953: The Veteran’s Memorial YMCA pool opened, serving “non-white” residents barred from other county facilities. The county opened its first integrated community center at Lubber Run Park in 1956.

May 7, 1958: Green Valley Citizens Association became the first Negro group to be admitted to the Arlington County Civic Federation.

Feb. 2, 1959: Gloria Thompson, Ronald Deskins, Lance Newman and Michael Jones (students) desegregated Stratford Junior High School

1960: A sit-in at the People’s Drug Store in Cherrydale protesting segregated lunch counters kicked off a month of sit-ins. Woolworth’s store in Shirlington was the first to announce it was desegregating; 21 lunch counters followed suit.

2013: The Green Valley Pharmacy became Arlington County's first historically black commercial building to be given a local historic district designation.