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.
Introduction
This is a research project that mines select archives to determine the historic location, positionality, and embodiment of Black bodies within and among the physical and cultural landscape of Arlington County. 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 gathered information to document an African American mobility within the Arlington landscape between 1619-present day.
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. It embodies the ability for Black people to consciously 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 are not the same as in the 1800s, due to retrocession and other manipulative land ordinances. This affects the geographies and stories of modern-day Washington, DC and Alexandria, VA. As a result, historical research cited as Alexandria and Washington, DC really references the present-day Arlington County.
Black Mobility Archive: Arlington, VA
The “Black Mobility Archive: Arlington, VA” takes the form of a website designed to be highly accessible to the public. The research 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 bodies in Arlington County.
The website contains primary source material such as content from researched archives, official records, oral histories, etc. Secondary sources include books, articles, films, websites, podcasts, blogs, etc.; with which we interpret the primary source material. Historical and contemporary research has been performed at the Arlington Community Archives, the Arlington Historical Society, George Mason University, the Arlington Public Libraries, the Library of Virginia, and other repositories of local history and scholarship.