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Cycling Through Arlington’s History

May is National Biking Month, and to celebrate, let’s take a look at Arlington’s decades-long history of bicycle enthusiasm!

1939

The County Sheriff’s department and a local chapter of the VFW team up to form a bicycle safety club for youth in Arlington. According to a February 24, 1939 news article, the “bicycle rage of the [18]90s” was on the upswing, and conditions for cycling were hazardous on the local roads.

1941

The County issues a set of rules for regulating bicycle use.

Cyclists were required to carry a license and tag, and bicycles were not to be ridden “faster than is reasonable and proper.”

Notice about bicycle laws from the October 17, 1941 issue of the Northern Virginia Sun. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

1950s

Bicycling remains a popular recreational activity in Arlington, though largely regulated to neighborhood street cycling alongside pedestrians.

1967

Arlington paves its first bicycle facility: a multi-use trail made of crushed limestone of about three miles along Four Mile Run. The trail opening included a ceremony at Bluemont Park, a performance by the Navy band, and cycling exhibitions.

This was also the first bicycle trail in the nation to be built with federal funds.

Program from the opening of Arlington’s first bike trail. Image courtesy of the VA State Department of Conservation and Recreation via BikeArlington.

A crowd gathers on bikes for a conservation event at Four Mile Run, circa the late 1960s. (214-9205)

1972

The Washington Area Bicyclists Association is formed, drawing members from the DMV region and advocating for improved bicycle facilities.

1973

The County completes its first commuter bikeway, connecting to the Spout Run Parkway and providing access to Rosslyn. Additionally, an eleven-member Bicycle Advisory Committee is established to advise on cycling-related issues and development.

Children line up for bicycle safety inspection, run by the Arlington County Police Department, 1969.

1974

Arlington’s Master Bikeway plan is released, which calls for an 80-mile network of trails for commuter and recreational use.

1977

Metro stations debut in Arlington, which shapes the County’s transportation plan to include a bike trail along the route of I-66 and bicycle parking at the new stations.

1982

Custis Trail is completed, adding 8.5 miles of trail to the area.

Picture9

Map of County bike trails, 1977.

Bike underpass at Wilson Boulevard and Four Mile Run

Bike underpass at Wilson Boulevard and Four Mile Run. Date unknown. (210-0103)

1994

The Arlington Bicycle Transportation plan is adopted, and $7.3 million is eventually allocated to develop new bike trails, bicycle lanes, and bicycle parking.

2008

The County adopts the Bicycle Element, a new planning document focused on continuing bicycle development.

2010

Arlington launches Capital Bikeshare in partnership with the District of Columbia.

bike share

First generation Capital Bikeshare bicycles, February 2012 at Central Library.

Sources

Active Living and Biking: Tracing the Evolution of a Biking System in Arlington, Virginia, by Royce Hanson and Garry Young

Baseline Report – The State of Bicycling in Arlington, County publication

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

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Joan Trumpauer Mulholland: Taking a Stand

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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.

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (1941-Present) is a civil rights activist, educator, and founder of the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation.  She is best known for her role as a white freedom rider, risking her personal safety in pursuit of equality and social justice while defying racist attitudes and prejudices towards Blacks during the Jim Crow era.

Born in the District of Columbia and raised in Arlington County, Mulholland was deeply troubled at an early age by what she perceived as unfair treatment of minorities when a school friend dared her to walk through a predominantly Black section of town.  Despite being only 10 years old, she felt the discomfort and alienation of the people she observed and thus vowed to play a role in changing attitudes and contributing to the elimination of racism in American society.

Following what she felt was an unfulfilling year spent attending Duke University, Mulholland spent the next year working on Capitol Hill which led to her involvement with the Nonviolent Action Group from Howard University.  1960 found her participating in sit-ins which often led to her being arrested and labeled as mentally ill owing to her unique status as a white, southern woman.  One of these sit-ins took place on June 10, 1960, at the Drug Fair drugstore in Cherrydale in an attempt to integrate the lunch counter.  Mulholland documented these experiences in a diary, which detailed conditions of her confinement which included segregated cells, what she was given to eat, and how she forged bonds with her Black counterparts.

1961 saw Mulholland joining the Freedom Riders, an integrated group of Black and white activists who defied the southern practice of segregated busing by refusing to travel separately.  That summer, Mulholland, accompanied by activists Stokely Carmichael, Hank Thomas, and others, traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, with members of the Congress of Racial Equality.

Mugshot of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, June 8, 1961.

After refusing to leave a bus station area there, Mulholland was arrested and taken to Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi, a notoriously harsh prison. Mulholland, who was only 19 at the time, refused to post bail. Since there was no women’s wing of the prison then, she was housed on death row for two months and kept in a cramped, segregated cell with 17 other women.

Mulholland served her two-month sentence plus additional time to work off the $200 fine she owed, before attending school at Tougaloo College in Jackson where she had enrolled during her incarceration.  While a junior at Tougaloo, she participated in a sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, which resulted in considerable violence and great risk to her safety.  In August of 1963, she helped organize the March on Washington before graduating from Tougaloo in 1964.

After returning to Arlington later that same year, Mulholland married, had five sons, worked at Patrick Henry Elementary School as a teacher’s aide and in 2014 founded the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation, dedicated to involving new generations in activism and social justice.  “I want to show the younger folks that you can do something that will have an effect,” she said in 2015.  “It’s just a matter of starting.”

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Oral History: West Brothers Brick Company

Interview with Rayfield Barber

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.

Arlington was once a hub for brick production – providing the materials that would make up many of the homes and buildings in the area.

The West Brothers Brick Company was founded in 1844 and came to Arlington shortly after the Civil War in 1866. Boosted by clay deposits along the Potomac, the West brothers bought 40 acres and established a powerhouse production site of local brick. Other companies quickly followed suit, and the region supported 10 plants that used local clays by 1905 - mostly producing red brick, though the West Brothers also made clay tile as well.

The company remained in operation in Arlington until 1942, when the land was taken over by the federal government to build the Pentagon. About 250 people were employed by the company at this time, and the West Brothers Brick Company subsequently moved operations to Landover, Maryland.

Bricks made by the company were used in notable buildings around the Capital Region, including the White House, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court building, both Senate office buildings, and the Capitol.

In this oral history interview, Rayfield Barber discusses his time working as a machine operator at the West Brothers Brick Company. Barber began working for the company around the time of the Great Depression in 1932, working 10 hours a day for twelve and a half cents an hour. To get to work, he would take the bus from Columbia Pike in the Barcroft neighborhood, and would later walk from the brickyard to his home in Green Valley.

West Brothers Brick Company offices at 720 15th NW in Washington, D.C., 1902.

Barber worked for West Brothers until 1937, at which point the brick workers went on strike. Later, he worked at the Hoover Airport and the National Airport for over 50 years after the Hoover airfield closed down. As a porter, he waited on celebrities like Clark Gable, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Kennedys, and in 1991 he was honored for his longtime service.

West Brothers brickyard panoramic, 1903.

Narrator: Rayfield Barber
Interviewer: Edmund Campbell and Cas Cocklin
Date: July 17, 1991

Cas Cocklin: Tell us a little bit around the brickyard.  How large was it more or less?  And how many people were employed there?  I know perhaps you don't know the exact number but roughly?

Rayfield Barber: It was a pretty large brickyard because they made bricks and tile at West Brothers Brick Company.

CC: To whom were they selling these?  To the government or to private contractors?

RB: They was selling them to the government and to private contractors.  They had a bunch of Dutch kilns which they start the bricks in.  What would happen, they would bring this through the machine, they had one machine that ran over and over with molds in it and then clay would fall into the molds and when it come around and it had a belt, a conveyor belt . . .

CC: Now was this just one mold at a time or did they have a row of molds?

RB: No, it was a whole lot of molds in this here wheel-like thing and it was big tubs in there and it would fill up, I guess it was just 4 x 8 for the bricks and then the clay would fall in there and then pat down and when it come around it had something like a knife blade, cut it off and when they did that, the plunge would drop down and knock the bricks out and they'd come right out on this conveyor belt and they'd have men standing in line, about five men standing in line off bearing the bricks. Putting them, setting them on these carts.

CC: Were they also inspecting them at the same time, in case one was broken or something?

RB: No, if it was broken, the men would just throw that brick away.

Edmund Campbell: Where did you get clay?

RB: The clay was right now where the Pentagon City is, there's a clay field right down in there and it had a little dinky, a little engine that ran by steam.

The West Brothers brick kilns, right, were eventually razed to build Pentagon. Photo from 1942.

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.

Barbara Marx: 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.

Barbara Marx

A native of Pennsylvania, Barbara Marx went to school at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Chicago, and for a time lived in pre-Hitler Germany. During WWII she moved to Arlington and subsequently became involved with civil rights activities and the NAACP in which she held various offices

She was also active in other community and activist organizations such as Arlingtonians for a Better County (ABC), the Arlington Community Action Committee (ACAC), and the League of Women Voters (LWV). However, it was her role in the desegregation of the Arlington Public Schools that was her most significant contribution to civil rights.

In the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown vs Board of Education the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. However by 1956 nothing had changed, and the NAACP decided that it was time to put forward lawsuits to try to make the Commonwealth comply with Brown. Marx became one of the few active white members of the Arlington NAACP who, along with two of her daughters, became plaintiffs in a 1956 lawsuit which the NAACP brought against the Arlington County School Board (Thompson vs the County School Board of Arlington County).

Once the suit was reported in the newspapers Marx was harassed, day and night, with obscene phone calls, threats that her house would be bombed as well as attacks by the KKK. However, although fearful and apprehensive, she was a person of deep convictions. She stood her ground and refused to give in under repeated threats even after bigots, angry with her decision to continue the fight, redoubled their efforts to terrorize her.

Flyer for Long Island Lodge & Chapter of B'nai B'riths' Annual Brotherhood Symposium. Barbara Marx serves as a panelist for a vital panel discussion.

Finally, in 1956 the long battle was over when Thompson vs County School Board of Arlington was settled in favor of the plaintiffs, which eventually led to the desegregation of Stratford Junior High School in 1959.

Equal opportunity in housing and employment, and the "war on poverty" were also issues with which Marx was involved, but her unwavering stand on desegregation in the face of continuous, ruthless harassment was arguably her most important contribution to social justice.

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Arlington’s Signature Soda: Cherry Smash

Did you know that Arlington was once home to one of the country’s most popular sodas?

A one-gallon Cherry Smash syrup jug, from the Rosslyn bottling location (left). A Cherry Smash logo, noting the Rosslyn location (right). Images courtesy of Washington, D.C., Area Beer and Soda Bottles collector, Chosi.

Cherry Smash soda was founded in 1901 by John E. Fowler in Richmond, Virginia. The company produced a cherry-flavored syrup that could be added to carbonated water or ice cream, and the drink gained early popularity amidst the rise of the soda fountain, earning the nickname of “Our nation’s beverage.” Throughout the early 1900s, there was even a Cherry Smash-sponsored amateur baseball team in the Richmond League.

The soda came to Arlington right around the time Prohibition went into effect. With a plan to move the company’s headquarters from Richmond to Arlington, Fowler purchased the Arlington Brewery in 1920 for $125,000 and converted it into a Cherry Smash plant (also referred to as the “Fowler Building”).

Arlington Brewing Company, which became known as the Fowler Brewery after purchase by John Fowler (left). Dated between 1910 and 1926. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. Fowler Brewery Letterhead, date unknown (right).

The site was initially known as the Consumer Brewery and was built in 1896 by Albert Goenner, a local architect who also oversaw the construction of the original County courthouse. Located near what was the old Aqueduct Bridge, it was a major purveyor of alcohol in the region during a time when Rosslyn was known for being a hotbed of criminality. From the 1880s to the early 1900s, people from the District and the greater Capital region would come over Arlington’s bridges to gamble and drink, most notably in Rosslyn’s saloons.

In 1904, however, nearly 50 of the saloons, bordellos, and gambling houses were shut down by Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Crandall Mackey, and Rosslyn’s salacious reputation began to wane. The same year, the Consumer Brewery reorganized and was renamed the Arlington Brewing Company and continued to produce beer for out-of-state sale until production was banned in 1918.

View from Georgetown of the Rosslyn area across the Aqueduct Bridge, circa 1900. The then-Consumer Brewery can be seen at the top right corner.

When the Cherry Smash company set up shop in Arlington in 1920, the soda was one of the largest soda brands in the country, second only to Coca-Cola. As Cherry Smash ingratiated itself into the Arlington landscape, Fowler also became a prominent member of Arlington’s business community, advocating for business development in Rosslyn in the 1920s and serving as chairman of the Arlington Trust Company Bank from 1925 until his death in 1960.

Cherry Smash continued to be manufactured and bottled at the Rosslyn site until around the 1950s. Numerous other operations also took place on or adjacent to the Cherry Smash property, including a lithographing company, a laundry facility, a hardware warehouse, a millwork facility, and a tree surgery company. In 1943, part of the Cherry Smash plant was used to manufacture and bottle wine, connecting the location back to its pre-Prohibition roots.

In 1940, J. Willard Marriott opened a Hot Shoppe next to the Cherry Smash facilities, which had become a highly successful local restaurant chain since the first location debuted in D.C. in 1927. In 1958, Marriott demolished the soda plant to construct a “Hot Shoppe’s Motel,” which in 1959 debuted as the “Marriott Motor Hotel,” and was later called the Key Bridge Marriot.

 

An early Cherry Smash syrup dispenser that would have been used at a soda fountain. This particular style was called a ball dispenser. Image courtesy of Lancaster County News.

In the 1950s, Washington A-list investor C. Wyatt Dickerson purchased the company, and Robert Pond (who later founded the still-existing Pond Roofing) served as president during this era. Cherry Smash continued to be manufactured in Arlington into the 1960s at a new location at 601 North Randolph Street in the Ballston area, where it was bottled and sold in gallon form.

Cherry Smash’s legacy lives on in Arlington through artifacts at the Arlington Historical Society and through throwbacks such as New District Brewery’s Sour Cherry Smash beer.

Excerpt from the “Year of Bargaining Accomplished” advertising section of the 1962 “Blue and Gray” yearbook from Washington-Lee High School (now Washington-Liberty High School).

Excerpt from the “Reflections through Enterprise” advertising section of the 1963 “Blue and Gray” yearbook from Washington-Lee High School (now Washington-Liberty High School).

View of the old Marriott Hotel near the Key Bridge, on the site of what was formerly the Cherry Smash factory. Photo was taken in December 1962.

Learn more:

For more information about the area’s history with brewing, check out Capital Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in Washington, D.C., available at the Library.

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

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Dr. Charles Drew: Taking a Stand

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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.

Dr. Charles Drew

Dr. Charles Richard Drew (1904-1950) was a surgeon and a pioneer in the field of blood plasma preservation, storage, and transfusions.  His accomplishments as the creator of the modern-day blood bank came during a time when opportunities for minorities in the medical field were nearly non-existent and society at large was beset with racial division and prejudice.

Dr. Charles Drew

Born in Washington D.C., Drew arrived in Arlington County in 1920 when his parents relocated to what is now known as the Penrose neighborhood, although he continued to attend the District’s Dunbar High School. Awarded an athletic scholarship by Amherst University in Massachusetts, he graduated and subsequently gained employment at Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland. From 1926–1928, he was a professor of chemistry and biology, served as football coach, and was the first athletic director at the historically Black institution.

Using the money he saved from his tenure at Morgan College, Drew studied medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, finishing second in his class while earning his Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree in 1933. Following a brief time spent as a faculty instructor for pathology at Howard University and teaching surgery/assistant surgeon at Freedman's Hospital, in 1938 Drew undertook graduate and then postgraduate studies at Columbia University in New York City. This marked the genesis of Drew’s groundbreaking research, authoring his seminal dissertation "Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation”, which his mentor Dr. John Scudder described as “a masterpiece” and “one of the most distinguished essays ever written, both in form and content.”

Home of Dr. Charles Drew in the now Penrose Neighborhood in Arlington County

In 1940, he became the first Black to earn a Doctor of Science degree in medicine before traveling to New York City, where he headed the World War II-era “Blood for Britain” program. “Blood for Britain” used Drew’s research in the field of blood plasma to enable the preservation, storage, transport, and distribution of donated blood from United States donors to British soldiers and civilians. The program also ushered in the use of “bloodmobiles”, a means by which refrigerated containers of stored blood were transported by trucks and vans to hospitals, clinics, and individuals in need.

In 1941, Drew became director of the American Red Cross Blood Bank but resigned from the position a year later, following a pronouncement by the armed forces that the donated blood of African-Americans would be stored separately from those of whites. This 1944 quote reflects Drew’s feelings:

"It is fundamentally wrong for any great nation to willfully discriminate against such a large group of its people…One can say quite truthfully that on the battlefields nobody is very interested in where the plasma comes from when they are hurt…It is unfortunate that such a worthwhile and scientific bit of work should have been hampered by such stupidity."

Drew then returned to Howard University and Freedmen’s Hospital where he taught and performed numerous surgeries.

Dr. Charles Drew

On April 1, 1950, during a visit to Tuskegee, Alabama where he attended the annual free clinic at the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital, Drew was involved in a tragic automobile accident. The accident was a result of exhaustion and fatigue after spending the previous evening performing operations and surgeries.

The accident caused his three passengers only minor injuries, but Drew’s were severe and proved to be fatal. Drew passed away that same day, and his funeral was held on April 5, 1950, at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

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Oral History: Bob & Edith’s Diner

Interview with Gregory Bolton

“Bob & Edith’s Diner with high rise apartment in background,” 2010. Photo by Emma Chaplin as part of the “Capturing Arlington” photo contest.

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.

Bob & Edith’s Diner has been an Arlington mainstay for more than 50 years. Established in 1969 by Bob and Edith Bolton, the original Bob & Edith’s got started when the couple took over the location of a “Gary’s Donut Dinette” for $800. The diner started with simple Southern dishes, such as country hams, scrapple, bologna, bacon, and country breakfasts.

The Boltons later added several locations in addition to the flagship diner on Columbia Pike, and in 1982, the diner expanded from a 10-stool counter to 5 stools and 7 booths. The interiors include many photos of the Bolton family, as well as Dallas Cowboys ephemera and a jukebox.

“Color shot of Bob & Edith’s Diner,” 2010. Photo by Muna Abdulkader as part of the “Capturing Arlington” photo contest.

In this oral history interview, Bob and Edith’s son Gregory Bolton describes the history and operations of the diner and its expanding menu. Today, his son and daughter, Christopher and Tamara Bolton run Bob & Edith’s, continuing the family tradition.

Narrator: Gregory Bolton
Interviewer: Virginia Smith
Date: December 19, 2011

Bob & Edith’s Diner featured in the South Arlington section of a 1984 Arlington hotel and restaurant guide.

Bob & Edith’s Diner featured in the South Arlington section of a 1988 Arlington hotel and restaurant guide.

Gregory Bolton: When I was growing up, there was no such thing as really a menu. What there was—above the, in front of the ten stools that were there, and above the grills, there were just signs, such as The Serviceman’s Special. We’d have an artist that would paint these signs up, roughly around sixteen inches, by maybe twenty inches. And it would, for example, would have a serviceman eating a chipped beef breakfast, that we would call it SOS, Serviceman’s Special. And each product was put across the front of the diner, and that’s how you would choose what you would like. There was no hand menu; it was across the board. And we’d replace them like once or twice a year.

Virginia Smith: And then when did you go to a menu, a printed menu?

GB: We probably went to a menu, I would say maybe about twenty-five years ago. The first ten or fifteen years it was pretty much all up in front of you; you picked it out, different ideas and different products. But the menu’s ten, fifteen times larger now than it was back then.

VS: Yeah. Did you get people coming down from the Pentagon?

GB: Yes ma’am. We had Pentagon, and the Navy Annex are very big customers. We had a lot of servicemen. I would say it’s seventy-five, eighty percent is government-related, whether it’s the County, state, Pentagon—

VS: Well, it’s affordable.

GB: —The military. They seem to be very pleased with the operation, and they keep coming back.

“The original Bob & Edith’s Diner,” 2010. Photo by Matthew Welborn as part of the “Capturing Arlington” photo contest.

Sources
https://www.bobandedithsdiner.com/About-Us

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.

William A. Rowe: Taking a Stand

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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.

William A. Rowe

William Augustus Rowe (1834-1907) was a pivotal figure in the early development of the Green Valley/Nauck community. In the face of a post-Civil War world in which the Emancipation Proclamation was more legal decree than societal reality, Rowe persevered to achieve many firsts as a Black policeman, politician, elected official, district Supervisor and Chairman, and community leader.

William A. Rowe, possibly 1880's

Born into enslavement around 1834, Rowe eventually escaped and settled in the Freedman’s Village community. There, he trained and became a skilled blacksmith prior to becoming the first Black policeman in Arlington County. Rowe soon proved himself to be an able and effective politician, becoming the first Black elected to the Board of Supervisors. He served as Supervisor of the Jefferson District from 1871 to 1879 and as Arlington District Board Chairman from 1879 to 1883 after moving to Green Valley/Nauck, where he had previously purchased 5 acres of land from Sewell Corbett.

Upon Rowe’s departure from the Jefferson District, he earned this extraordinary resolution from the other two white supervisors:

“Resolved that the resignation of William A. Rowe as a member of this board having been made known, the faithful and efficient discharge of his duties during the past ten years, and the upright and honorable conduct that has marked his public service entitles him to the confidence, esteem, and gratitude of the people of this County.”

William A. Rowe’s tenure with the Board of Supervisors is as follows:

  • July 1, 1871-June 30, 1872, Jefferson Township, Board of Supervisors
  • July 1, 1872- June 30, 1873, Jefferson Township, Chairman, Board of Supervisors
  • July 1, 1873- June 30, 1874, Jefferson Township, “President” (Chairman), Board of Supervisors
  • July 1, 1874- April 2, 1879, Jefferson District, Chairman (moved from Jefferson to Arlington District)
  • July 1, 1879- June 30, 1883, Arlington District, Chairman

After his resignation as Chairman in 1883, he was appointed Superintendent of the Poor, a position he held through June of 1886.

Rowe continued to live in Green Valley/Nauck, where his son George served as a deacon at Lomax AME Zion Church, until his passing on December 5, 1907.

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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

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.

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:

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