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More to Explore: Author Rebecca Traister

Did you catch our conversation with Arlington Reads featured author Rebecca Traister? You still have time!

The interview will be available until Thursday, April 15 on:

March 18 Rebecca Traister

During the conversation, Ms. Traister discusses her latest book “Good and Mad,” the story of female fury and its cultural significance, demonstrating its crucial role in women’s slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it comes from women as opposed to men. 

More to Explore

If you are interested in learning more about the women and historical moments featured in “Good and Mad,” we have curated a book list, which spotlights the works of Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alicia Garza, and many more.

Good and Mad Book List

Take a deep dive into Traister's work with this YouTube playlist featuring speeches and conversations referenced throughout “Good and Mad.”

  1. Leymah Gbowee Discusses The Role of Women OnThe Front Lines of Peacebuilding   
  2. Myisha Cherry Anger is not a bad word TEDxUofIChicago
  3. Patrisse Cullors and Angela Davis TimesTalks
  4. Emma Gonzalez's powerful March for Our Lives speech in full
  5. Congresswoman Lee’s AUMF Speech on 9/14/01
  6. Shirley Chisholm Declares Presidential Bid, January 25, 1972
  7. 1970s USA Women's Liberation Rally with Gloria Steinem
  8. Michelle Obama on being called an "angry black woman"
  9. Audre Lorde on Radical Care and Political Warfare
  10. Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” Performed by Kerry Washington

Learn more about upcoming Arlington Reads events and watch previous Arlington Reads conversations.

Arlington Reads

Roberta Flack’s Arlington Roots

Roberta Flack is known worldwide for her voice, songwriting and overall musical ability, for which she has won multiple Grammys. Flack has performed on stages across the world, and her roots are here in her hometown of Arlington.

Early Life

Flack was born near Asheville, North Carolina, in 1937, and moved to the Green Valley (formerly referred to as Nauck) neighborhood in Arlington when she was five years old. Musical from an early age, Flack began playing the organ and piano around age 9 and performed at local churches including Macedonia Baptist Church and Lomax AME Zion.

Roberta Flack photographed by Anthony Barboza, 1971. Image courtesy of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Flack grew up playing Chopin, Schumann, Bach, and Beethoven, and at 13, won a statewide contest by performing a Scarlatti sonata. One of her piano teachers was Lottie B. Bellamy, an Arlington resident and longtime organist at Macedonia Baptist Church. Flack’s mother, Irene Flack, was also a prominent community member, serving as the longtime chief baker at Wakefield High School and as an organist at Lomax AME Zion.

Flack attended Hoffman-Boston High School – then the only school available for African American children in Arlington – until age 15, when she was awarded a full music scholarship to Howard University. After graduating at 19, she went on to become a music teacher in Farmville, North Carolina, teaching about 1,300 students at all grade levels in the city’s segregated school system.

In Roberta Flack’s 1953 senior yearbook at Hoffman-Boston, she was listed as “most musical” in the class superlatives, and in the “Class Prophecy,” her classmates predicted she would play piano at Carnegie Hall. This prediction eventually came true when Flack performed there in 1971 (and again in 1981).

Starting Her Career

Flack's music career took off in D.C., where she also continued to work as a teacher at the Rabaut and Brown junior high schools in the D.C. public school system. She began performing in the evenings at locations such as the Tivoli Theater and Mr. Henry’s in the District. At the Tivoli, she also worked as a backing pianist for opera singers, and her spark as a solo performer came with a rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock” performed at the restaurant, where Flack said it was her "cue that people would listen to [her] as a singer.”

Mr. Henry’s became one of her regular venues, and the club’s owner, Henry Yaffe, even turned the apartment above the club into the “Roberta Flack Room” for her performances – adding in church pews and a Mason & Hamlin piano to create a more intimate energy than the more raucous main stage. She started off playing Sunday brunch sets for $20 a week, initially with a folk-inspired repertoire. However, as her fame and success as a performer quickly grew, she began to consider pursuing it full-time. Of this time in her life, she said:

"It took courage to leave my classroom job because I was a Black person who had grown up in Arlington, Virginia, through the ‘50s and ‘60s; now I’m teaching school in the late ‘60s and I decide I want to sing. These days, there’s lots of things that you can go for, but in those days you had to have a lot of heart and a strong desire to do that.”

Watercolor portraits of Roberta Flack, Harry Nilsson, Carole King, and Ian Anderson (starting clockwise from top right), circa 1973. Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.

Legacy

In 1969, she recorded her first album, First Take, with Atlantic Records. Aptly recorded in only 10 hours, the song’s discography was informed by pieces she had developed at Mr. Henry’s. Flack continued to return to the venue as her career took off, using it as a home base during her other performances in the District.

One of her first big hits was from that first album when in 1973 Clint Eastwood featured her song “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” (a folk ballad Flack had taught to her students in school glee clubs) in the film “Play Misty for Me.” Flack collaborated with many artists over the course of her career, including Donny Hathaway, Peabo Bryson, and for her album Oasis, Flack collaborated with longtime friend Maya Angelou on four songs, including “And So It Goes.”

Flack has continued to make music well into the 21st century, and in 2020, was the recipient of the Grammy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Roberta Flack photographed by Anthony Barboza, 1971. Image courtesy of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Poster from “Roberta Flack Human Kindness Day” on April 22, 1972, in Washington, D.C., to celebrate Flack. Image by Lloyd McNeill & Lou Stovall, courtesy of Di and Lou Stovall from the “What's Going Around: Lou Stovall and the Community Poster, 1967–1976” exhibit at the Columbus Museum.

Learn More

“Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time” features a section discussing the history of Roberta Flack’s cover of “Killing Me Softly,” and the subsequent Fugees rendition.

Nguyen Ngoc Bich: Speaking Out

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Join us for a new series of stories from the Center for Local History highlighting members of our community who made a difference in ways that helped shape our history and created positive change. 

Their voices were not always loud, but what they said or did had a significant impact on our community.

Nguyen Ngoc Bich

Nguyen Ngoc Bich (1937-2016) was a pivotal Arlingtonian in commercial and community affairs alike.  After his arrival in the U.S. in 1975, Bich became an educator in Arlington County, teaching adults at the Arlington Career Center as well as students at Key Elementary and Wakefield High School before teaching Vietnamese culture, literature, and civilization at George Mason University.

Little Saigon, date unknown

Bich branched out into endeavors such as authoring and editing works of both non-fiction and poetry, translating books into Vietnamese and English, and becoming Director of the Vietnamese Service for Radio Free Asia. Bich also played a crucial role in the establishment of the restaurants and shops in Clarendon known as “Little Saigon”.

He advocated and urged his fellow Vietnamese residents to take advantage of inexpensive short-term real estate contracts made available by vacancies from businesses that left as a result of demolition for Metro construction.  It is estimated that at the height of Little Saigon’s heyday, it comprised as many as 70-80 establishments.

Little Saigon, date unknown

Despite often facing resistance as a result of tensions from the Vietnam War, Bich became the Multicultural Coordinator for Arlington County from 1987-1991.  In his own words:

“I knew every single person, establishment in the area, and not just the Vietnamese…I knew the Hispanic… Cambodian… Ethiopian…the whole community, and that’s why they called me the deputy mayor of Arlington.”

Further Reading:

Do you have a question about this story, or a personal experience to share? 

Use this form to send a message to the Charlie Clark Center for Local History.

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Examining Dr. Seuss

Libraries across the country, Arlington Public Library among them, are having conversations about how to balance the core library value of intellectual freedom with the harmful stereotypes depicted in many of what are regarded as children's classics.

Last week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it will cease publication and sales of six titles because they portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong: "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," "If I Ran the Zoo," "McElligot’s Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!," "Scrambled Eggs Super!" and "The Cat’s Quizzer."

Existing copies of these titles in the Arlington Public Library collection will remain in circulation until they are no longer usable. As they are now out of print, these titles will not be replaced when they leave the collection.

In light of this news, it’s worth taking a look at the books of our childhood with a critical eye. We no longer live in the world Seuss lived in when he created these works. If you want to share classics and older titles with young readers, consider taking the opportunity to have a conversation about the themes, characterization and the time period a book was published. Then balance these stories with other diverse titles.

Diversity in publishing, especially in youth literature, has been a topic of conversation and concern in the industry for a number of years. Arlington Public Library intentionally curates its collections to ensure diversity of themes, characters and authors, and systematically reviews the collection for gaps. We invite you to discover new titles and authors through our booklists, catalog and collections.

Browse Catalog

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Oral History: Margaret Troxell

Margaret Troxell (1909-2002) was a pioneering local journalist who helped found the Northern Virginia Sun.

Arlington Voices the Oral History Collection

Oral histories are used to understand historical events, actors, and movements from the point of view of real people’s personal experiences.

Margaret Troxell moved to Arlington in 1932 after attending St. Joseph College in Maryland. She first worked for the Commonwealth Monitor, where her salary started off at $8 (half of which was used to pay for her rent as a boarder on Fillmore Street). She later took on part-time work at the Washington Post and the Washington Times, as well as a music studio manager and music instructor, teaching guitar and mandolin.

Margaret Troxell at her desk, date unknown.

To make ends meet, she also did news broadcasts for the first radio station in Arlington, WARL. In 1935, Troxell and a group of other local journalists founded the Sun, a weekly paper based in Arlington. There she worked as a journalist and editor and was known for never missing a County Board meeting in her 16 years as news editor.

Troxell and the other owners sold the Sun in 1951, and it is now known as the Northern Virginia Sun. Later in life, Troxell opened a public relations office and worked on numerous campaigns around the County. She lived in Colonial Village for over 40 years, and outside of journalism, was an active member of Arlington’s Business and Professional Women’s Club and the Virginia Conservation Commission.

In the following oral history interview, Margaret Troxell discusses what initially inspired her to become a journalist, and how she became interested in writing.

Margaret Troxell’s press pass, issued October 22, 1946

Narrator: Margaret Troxell
Interviewer: Ellen MacMahon
Date: 1984
Note: The audio for this interview is currently unavailable.

Ellen MacMahon: Can we talk, then, about your work - when you got started in journalism and what made you choose journalism.

Margaret Troxell: Well, when I was in school, in those days, professions for women were somewhat limited to teaching or nursing or something like that and, of course, I had started writing just as a child.  I have a vivid imagination, and I used to send articles and stories to papers and I would have them returned with a check when I was just 10, 12 years old - and, of course, they had no idea how old I was.  And this was very encouraging so when I reached the college level each summer in high school I worked on a newspaper.

EM: A local newspaper?

MT: Local newspapers.  Since we had this summer home in Emmetsburg, I worked on the Emmetsburg Chronicle, and that was a weekly - and I went in to see the editor, and he told me he couldn't pay me anything.  That was perfectly all right because at the time I didn't need any money.  But he taught me so much. And we had a regular barter system.  I used to go out and collect bills, and if people couldn't pay, I'd take a bushel of apples, a couple of chickens or a ham.  That was a lot of fun.  And then I worked on The Baltimore Sun one summer - different papers, Gettysburg Times and a little paper in Thurmont - and that was very interesting because I went there just to work on the paper, and the editor became very ill, and I ran the paper all summer.

EM: What an experience.

MT: That was quite an experience.  It gave me a lot of experience.  Then when I was ready to go to college, the family had a conference, and they decided that newspaper was not for their daughter, certainly not.  My father was very broadminded, and he said, "Sis, you stick to your guns, and I'm on your side." So it was finally agreed that I could take journalism if I also took education. So I am a graduate teacher.

A selection of clippings from some of Margaret Troxell’s human interest articles, from the Northern Virginia Sun (Dates from right to left: October 13, 1939; September 15, 1939; August 25, 1939)

This interview is available at the Center for History, and issues of the Sun and Northern Virginia Sun are available online through the CLH Community Archives and through Virginia Chronicle.

The goal of the Arlington Voices project is to showcase the Center for Local History’s oral history collection in a publicly accessible and shareable way.

The Arlington Public Library began collecting oral histories of long-time residents in the 1970s, and since then the scope of the collection has expanded to capture the diverse voices of Arlington’s community. In 2016, staff members and volunteers recorded many additional hours of interviews, building the collection to 575 catalogued oral histories.

To browse our list of narrators indexed by interview subject, check out our community archive. To read a full transcript of an interview, visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

Over 3000 Magazines Now on OverDrive/Libby

If you are an avid OverDrive or Libby app user, or if haven't yet tried the Library's eCollection, there are over 3000 new reasons to do so!

Digital magazines previously available through RBDigital are now available to read in OverDrive and Libby, along with thousands of new titles including the Economist, US Weekly, and the New Yorker.

How Borrowing Works

  • Borrow up to 10 digital magazine titles at one time (magazines don’t count towards your 10 eAudio/eBook limit)

  • Digital magazines can be checked out for 21 days, and are automatically returned when the checkout period expires.

  • Return digitial magazines early from your OverDrive or Libby app.

How to Get Started

You can read OverDrive/Libby eMagazines using the OverDrive website, OverDrive App, and the Libby App. All you need to get started is your library card. The OverDrive and Libby apps are available for download from the iTunes store for the iPad and iPhone, and on the Google Play Store for Android mobile devices.

For more information visit our OverDrive/Libby page:

OverDrive and Libby Magazines

Need Help?

Visit the OverDrive and Libby help pages for additional support.
If you have any other questions, contact Library staff by chat, text, or phone.

Celebrate Women’s History Month

2021

Women’s History Month is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture, and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the United States since 1987.

We celebrate Women's History Month to reflect on the often-overlooked contributions of women to United States history. The actual celebration of Women’s History Month grew out of a weeklong celebration of women’s contributions in 1978. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation declaring the week of March 8 as National Women’s History Week. 7 years later, the event expanded to the entire month of March.

five different looking women standing under the words "Women's History Month"

Book Lists

Women's History

Women's Suffrage

Black Women in America

Working Women

Women in Hollywood and Television

Women's History Month with Smithsonian Library & Archives

Celebrate Women's History Month with Art and Fun Activities

In Partnership with Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Pick up a Take and Make Craft Bag each week and join us online to craft together, listen to music, and get special information about fascinating American women. Supplies are limited! So if we run out, or you can't make it to the library, you can print out and gather your own materials for each week's craft:

Events at the Library

Highlights of Women's History in Arlington

Highlights of the Fight for the 19th Amendment

On This Day in 19th Amendment History: Mary Church Terrell

This Week in 19th Amendment History: Agatha Tiegel Hanson

This Week in 19th Amendment History: National Woman’s Rights Convention

Celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

This Week in 19th Amendment History: The Night of Terror

This Week in 19th Amendment History: The Death of Sojourner Truth

This Week in 19th Amendment History: Wyoming Day

This Week in 19th Amendment History: First Issue of The Woman’s Journal

This Week in 19th Amendment History: The Death of Zitkála-Šá

This Week in 19th Amendment History: Hallie Quinn Brown

This Week in 19th Amendment History: Suffragist Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

This Week in 19th Amendment History: Shifts and Splits in the Suffrage Movement

This Week in 19th Amendment History: Nannie Helen Burroughs

This Week in 19th Amendment History: Ida B. Wells

This Week in 19th Amendment History: The Ratification of the 19th Amendment

This Week in 19th Amendment History: The 19th Amendment is Officially Adopted

William T. Syphax: Taking a Stand

Graphic image of a megaphone

Join us for a new series of stories from the Center for Local History highlighting members of our community who made a difference in ways that helped shape our history and created positive change.

Their voices were not always loud, but what they said or did had a significant impact on our community.

William T. Syphax

Native Arlingtonian William Thomas Syphax (1920-1989) was a prominent Black business entrepreneur, philanthropist, and advocate for the Black community in Arlington County.

Born into Arlington’s venerable Syphax family (which included his great uncles William Syphax and John B. Syphax), Syphax earned a bachelor’s degree in math from Virginia State in 1942, a master’s degree in engineering administration from George Washington University, and eventually a Ph.D. in behavioral philosophy from Pacific Western University.  After a stint with the Army Air Force during WW2, he worked for the Department of Defense as an electrical engineer until 1964.

Margarite and William Syphax, spring 1957.

In the mid-late 1950s before his retirement from the Department of Defense, Syphax and his wife Margarite began building houses in Arlington. After seeing how many Blacks in Arlington County had to accept unsafe and inadequate conditions in the predominantly segregated Northern Virginia housing market, the couple began to concentrate on building well-crafted and affordable homes for their community.

Together, with William as developer and Margarite as secretary-treasurer, they founded Ballston-based W.T. Syphax Real Estate Co. and Syphax Management Co., ranking among the nation’s top 100 Black-owned businesses in the early 1970s and were profiled in Newsweek and Black Enterprise magazine.  They built homes in Arlington View (where William had grown up), Highland Park, Green Valley and elsewhere. Their first apartment complex was Arlington View Terrace, a 77-unit complex of garden apartments near Army Navy Country Club.

William T. Syphax and Margarite Syphax "Working Together" at their construction firm, 1960s.

Syphax was president of the Virginia Real Estate Brokers Association, chairman of the Arlington County Building Code Board of Appeals, as well as serving as director of the Arlington County Red Cross. He provided financial assistance to over 100 students from the segregated Hoffman-Boston public school for their college education and was music department chairman and senior choir director at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Arlington.

Do you have a question about this story, or a personal experience to share? 

Use this form to send a message to the Charlie Clark Center for Local History.

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Arlington’s First Black Legislators

On March 30, 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, extending the right to vote to all male citizens - regardless of race or if they had previously been enslaved. All of the nation, African-Americans took to the polls, and many became engaged in the political process as elected officials at all levels of government.

Arlington – which until 1920 was known as Alexandria County – was included in this political renaissance, and had a number of prominent Black politicians who won elected office and served as leaders following the Civil War.

However, African-American political organization in the County predates Reconstruction. Freedman’s Village was an epicenter of politics starting in 1865, when community members held a mass meeting that petitioned the military governor to guarantee equal rights. Months later, a group at Freedman’s Village held the first statewide political convention for African-Americans.

Freedman’s Village, pictured above in 1862, was a center of political activity in Arlington both before and after the Civil War. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

George Lewis Seaton

In 1869, George Lewis Seaton was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria.

According to the records of the House, Seaton was the first African American person to hold this position in Alexandria. While in office, Seaton voted to ratify both the 14th and 15th amendments. He was also one of six African American men appointed to the grand jury of the United States Circuit Court for Virginia – likely the first interracial jury in the state. This group indicted several Confederate officials for high treason.

Prior to holding office, Seaton worked as a carpenter and also helped establish a local branch of the Freedman’s Savings Bank and Trust Company.

The George Lewis Seaton House on South Royal Street in Alexandria. Image courtesy of Encyclopedia Virginia.

In the May 19, 1868, edition of the Alexandria Gazette, George Seaton advertised his carpentry business. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

John B. Syphax

John B. Syphax was another Black legislator in Alexandria County. The son of Charles and Maria Syphax, he was born a free person on the Parke-Custis Estate in 1835.

Syphax served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1874 to 1875, as the County’s treasurer from 1875 to 1879, and as a justice of the peace and county clerk.

John B. Syphax, date unknown. Image from “Arlington County, Virginia: A History,” by C.B. Rose.

Alfred William Harris

At the age of only 20, Alfred William Harris was elected to the Alexandria common council. Born enslaved in Fairfax County, Harris later moved to Alexandria and attended a school organized by the Freedman’s Bureau.

After holding office in Alexandria, Harris went on to serve four consecutive terms in the Virginia House of Delegates, representing Dinwiddie County. His accomplishments while there included introducing the bill that chartered what is now Virginia State University.

Alfred W. Harris, date unknown. 

Alfred W. Harris photo caption reads: “House of Delegates 1881-1888, Author of the House Bill to establish the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, Able Debater in Defense of his Race, Faithful Worker in the Readjuster Party.” Image courtesy of the Virginia General Assembly.

Learn more: The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Commission of the Virginia General Assembly has compiled a database of all the African American legislators elected to the General Assembly during the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Long Post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow Era

Black residents of Alexandria/Arlington County eventually held council seats and offices including treasurer, clerk, commissioner of revenue, sheriff, superintendent of roads, and overseer of the poor. H. L. Holmes was one notable officeholder, serving as commissioner of revenue from 1875 to 1903.

But following the initial prominence of Black legislators following the Civil War, for most of the 20th century, Arlington’s government was dominated by white legislators as many of the post-war resources and promises of equality quickly fell by the wayside nationwide. Reconstruction, which lasted from 1866-1877, was the Congressional attempt to reorganize the Southern states and offer support to formerly enslaved individuals. During this time, there was a brief period where African Americans were protected in their right to vote and participate in the political process. This progress was reflected nationally: at one point, there was an African American majority in the South Carolina government, and several African American men were elected to the Senate.

But even during Reconstruction, there were attempts by opponents to undermine support given to African Americans and undo the progress that had been made. Jim Crow law and “black codes” began to emerge during this time – discriminatory laws at the state and local level that systematically denied Black individuals from public accommodations suppressed their right to vote and prevented them from holding public office. Jim Crow laws could be seen in the County as early as 1868 when the Washington and Alexandria Railroad established segregated seating. Groups resembling the Ku Klux Klan also emerged in Northern Virginia during this time, and measures such as the poll tax and dual registration were implemented as early as 1876 in the County to disenfranchise African American voters.

When Reconstruction formally ended in 1877, all of these measures amounted to a systemic suppression of Black Americans’ right to vote and limitation on political power that would last well into the 20th century.

Leaders in the 20th Century & Judge William T. Newman, Jr.

In 1932, Arlington adopted a new form of County government with a County Manager and County Board members elected at large.  According to research conducted by Wilma Jones, Dr. Edward T. Morton was one of the Black community members to run for office under this new system of government. Dr. Morton was a longtime Hall’s Hill resident and the community’s first Black physician, operating a practice on Lee Highway. He ran for a County Board seat in 1931, and while he lost the election, he remained active in the community and civic life.

Learn more: "My Hall’s Hill Family," by Wilma Jones; Washington Post article announcing Dr. Edward T. Morton’s candidacy.

In 1987, William T. Newman, Jr., became the first Black member of the Arlington County Board. On the Board, one of his signature policies was establishing the County’s Human Rights Commission, and he was known for advocating for public safety and resources for drug abuse. In 1990, he was elected as Chairman of the County Board, becoming the first Black person to hold the position in the 20th century.

Newman grew up in the Nauck community of Arlington and attended Hoffman-Boston until the school closed in 1964 following desegregation. He trained and worked as both a lawyer and an actor, and has performed in soap operas, film, and theater performances. In 1993, Newman was appointed as a judge in the 17th judicial circuit court, covering Arlington County and the city of Falls Church. In 2003, he became chief judge of the County Circuit Court, where he continues to serve today.

Since Newman’s tenure, there have been two African American members of the County Board. Charles P. Monroe was elected to the Board in 1999 and served until his death in 2003. He had begun his first turn as Board chair at the time of his death. Christian Dorsey was elected to the County Board in 2015 and is currently serving his second term in office. He served as Board chair in 2019.

Chief Judge William T. Newman, Jr., performs in the 14th Annual Arena Stage Benefit for Community Engagement in “The Pundit Whodunit: The Case of the Political Puzzle,” on March 6, 2006. Image courtesy of C-SPAN.

Note: This article features only a sampling of the many African American community members who have held positions at the local level and who engaged in civic life. If you know of African-American individuals who have run for or held office in Arlington, and who should be included in this article, please let us know using the form below.

To learn more about Arlington's history, visit the Center for Local History on the first floor of the Central Library.

Do you have a question about this story, or a personal experience to share? 

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