Black Lives Next Door in Fairfax

It was very rare for African Americans to own land in the nineteeth and twentieth centuries. Most land was owned by slave owners and much of the community was still segregated. Towards the end of these centuries, an increasing amount of land was owned by freed African American slaves and their descendants.

William Dandridge Smith was an African American landowner between the nineteenth and twentieth century. He is originally from Gum Springs, Virginia which is part of Fairfax County, Virginia. His family was also one of the first Black families in Gum Springs. This exhibit will trace Wm. Dandridge Smith’s family back to about the year 1784.

            Much information about African American landowners is hard to find due to information not being readily available online. An important concept that contributes to this is “fact creation” as discussed in Trouillot’s book “Silencing the Past” (1995). This concept is described as when sources are being selected and made. Some sources get left out on purpose to cover certain aspects of the past that people don’t believe are as important as others. These people can be people in power that want to push a specific narrative that benefits them or society in general that may forget or misconstrue information. An effect of this is a lack of or incorrect information being shared.

            To work around the scarcity of information available online about African American History in Fairfax, information from the Historic Records Center of the Fairfax County Circuit court was able to be utilized. The information that was collected at the Historic Records Center consisted of land deeds, land tax records, and court records. The Virginia Room and online databases from the Fairfax County Public Library were also used to gather information. This exhibit will delve deeper into what information these records are able to provide and how they further help shape the story of William Dandridge Smith’s life.

[1] 1894 Land Tax Records in Fairfax County, in Mount Vernon Magisterial District, Fairfax County Courthouse Archives, Vol. 1894, Fairfax, Virginia.

[2] Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, 1995.

Jamie Van Cleave