Beyond the Campus: Black Resistance in Fairfax County
In a new Reston suburb, new Fairfax university, and new protest movement, anti-racist activism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Resistance to white supremacy in the United States has often been tied to the idea of geography, of being in a spatial "grid that is economically" and racially influenced by European practices of domination.[1] These practices of domination are important influences, but they are not all-determining factors in "the locations of black history, selfhood, [and] imagination."[2] Three imaginative Black organizations that made their own history--Reston Black Focus, a George Mason undergraduate group called Ujamaa, and the Action Coordinating Committee to End Segregation in the Suburbs (ACCESS)--are featured in this exhibit.
By Sira Anissa I Thiam
[1] Katherin McKittrick, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 1-36.
[2] McKittrick, Demonic Grounds, 6.
Reston Black Focus Goals and Activities
Publication by Reston Black Focus presenting their goals in organizing and the activities they hope to hold
Carlton Funn and Octavia Caldwell
Ujamaa president, Octavia Stanton Caldwell, with Carlton Funn, Alexandria middle school teacher who presented his research at the Festival of Black Exposure
