BLND: Geographies of Inequity

Joyce Russell was thirteen years old when she awoke to the sound of gunfire at her home. A few hours prior, the Russell family had celebrated the announcement that Joyce, her brother Cameron, and sister Deborah, would be allowed to integrate two Prince William County Schools in the fall of 1961. The attack on their home outside of Occoquan, Virginia was an escalation in the level of violence they were already being subjected to; previously, threats had only come in the form of anonymous phone calls.[1] Although Brown v. Board had been decided seven years prior, the events at the Russell household that summer night proved that attitudes of racism and bigotry continued to permeate the region.

While this event stands out as perhaps the most violent to befall a member of the Black community in the area, it is unfortunately not the only incident of discrimination in local residents’ pursuit of education. From the very beginnings of Virginia’s public school system, African Americans living in and around the incorporated town of Occoquan struggled against repeated moments of oppression and injustice. This digital history project aims to map out how those residents operated within a discriminatory educational system, with a specific focus on the community’s response to early exclusion, trivialization at the hands of the county, and consolidation. This latter event is particularly important due to ongoing conversations about school closings and Black community resistance, as referenced in the December 2022 edition of the Educational Researcher.[2] That article will help inform the histories presented here.

Additionally the geographic concepts at the center of Katherine McKittrick’s Demonic Grounds will aid in the examination of cycles of oppression and resistance in the Black community at the center of this project.[3] Existing narratives about African American history in Occoquan prioritize two sites: a Baptist church and a successful store. While it’s remarkable that these stories of Black accomplishment have survived, this overemphasis on feel-good accounts mutes the broader history of these two sites, in addition to the histories of the larger Black community in the area. Just as McKittrick viewed the Green Hill auction block as “much more than a well-constructed stone object,” the use of her theories in this project will enable a fuller viewing of spaces that still exist, as well as sites that no longer stand.[4] Furthermore, McKittrick’s emphasis on challenging traditional narratives supports an idea that is central to this project: the rigid boundaries of Occoquan’s historic district have led to limited interpretations of Black history in the area. Some Black residents (like Joyce Russell) did not live in Occoquan proper, but traveled into the town on a daily basis for worship; other individuals did live within the historic district, but attended school outside of the village because no schools for Black children existed within the town.

Finally, this project will draw on research conducted by Lucy Walsh Phinney in Yesterday’s Schools, a rigorous examination of the history of primary schools in Prince William County.[5] Here too, McKittrick’s ideas come into play: examining Black sites of education from the perspective of the families who built and attended them reconsiders the meaning attributed to these places by historians like Phinney.[6] Overall, the goal and hope of this project is to more accurately represent the stories of Black education in the Occoquan area, while contributing to a historical record that more proportionally features Black lives next door.

By Stephanie Martinez