BLND: Geographies of Inequity

Black lives are geographic. They have physically taken up space within predominantly white spaces and made their own. This is a story within a story; In the midst of the Civil Rights Movement era, a Black community began to adapt in a new town called Reston. A place where segregation was not practiced like it was in the rest of Virginia in the 1960s. The new and modern town was created to be a home away from the nation's capital. Robert E. Simon Jr. was the creator and did not want to create a town as another suburbs; Reston was meant to have the best parts of a city and a suburbs. There was concern that in a town where only five families were Black in a town of 1,100 people that their culture would fade away.[1] To combat this worry, an organization called the Reston Black Focus was created.

By: Hercilia Vasquez-Flores

[1] John H Johnson, ed., “Reston, VA: New Design for an Ideal City,” Ebony, December 1966, pp. 90-96, https://books.google.com/books?id=_5q3AoSbTGAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.