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Throwback Thursday

Union Army Balloon Corp

September 1861 - August 1863

While the first successful hot air balloon flights were completed in France in the 1790s, due to the work of Thaddeus S.C. Lowe (1832-1913), Arlington is home to their first use by the United States military. Lowe was a scientist and inventor who would go on to be known as the “Grandfather of Military Aerial Recon in the United States.”

Professor Lowe, c. 1860, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

Professor Lowe, 1861, Photo Courtesy of National Air and Space Museum

By the 1850s, Lowe was well regarded for his advanced meteorological theories and his reputation as an amateur balloonist. He gained national attention in 1861 when, on a test flight for a Trans-Atlantic balloon voyage, he was blown off course and imprisoned in South Carolina as a Union Spy.

Shortly after being cleared as a scientist, Lowe was released from jail and invited to Washington D.C. to perform demonstrations of his balloons for President Abraham Lincoln. On July 11, 1861, by hanging telegraph wires to his staff on the ground, Lowe sent a message from 500 feet above the White House that read,

“This point of observation commands an area near 50 miles in diameter. The city with its girdle of encampments presents a superb scene. I have pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station.”

President Lincoln was so impressed with Lowe and his balloons that he offered him the civilian position of Chief Aeronaut of the newly formed Union Army Balloon Corp.

Lowe’s Balloon Being Prepared in front  of the Capitol Building, 1861, Photo Courtesy of Ghosts of D.C.

Balloon View of Washington, May 1861, Photo Courtesy of U.S. Senate

Formation of Balloon Corps (Summer 1861)

Stationed at Fort Corcoran, in today’s Rosslyn/North Highlands Neighborhoods, the Balloon Corp’s mission was to provide aerial reconnaissance of Confederate troops just outside of Arlington.

The Balloon Corp was expanded after the first Battle of Bull Run. Lowe’s fleet of Balloons would grow to seven balloons that could be stationed up and down the Potomac River. To transport their balloons, the Balloon Corp was given use of a coal barge converted to be the world’s first aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington Parke Custis.

During the summer of 1861, Lowe and the Balloon Corp would make multiple ascensions over the Arlington Heights and Balls Crossroads (now Ballston) area in order to observe Confederate positions at Falls Church.

Drawing of USS George Washington Parke Custis with balloon ascending over Potomac River near Mount Vernon, November 1861, Photo Courtesy of United States Naval Institute

Lowe’s balloons were perfect for defensive observations, as he could safely evaluate the Confederate’s position and strength from the relative safety of his balloon. By using signal flags and a telegraph in the balloon, Lowe was able to relay messages quickly to the forces on the ground.

Lowe filling balloon from portable hydrogen generator, Gaines Mill Virginia, June 1, 1862, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress 

The U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission reported,

"On September 24, 1861, Lowe ascended to more than 1,000 feet (305 meters) near Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, and began telegraphing intelligence on the Confederate troops located at Falls Church, Virginia, more than three miles (4.8 kilometers) away. Union guns were aimed and fired accurately at the Confederate troops without actually being able to see them—a first in the history of warfare."

Although the Confederate troops were unable to see the Union guns firing at them, they were frequently able to see the reconnaissance balloon. Enemy soldiers and artillery frequently fired potshots at Lowe, often hitting near his staff on the ground below him. This earned him the nickname of "The Most Shot at Man" of the Civil War by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Professor Lowe observing Battle of Fair Oaks from balloon, May 1862, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

Distrust of the Balloon Corp

Over the next two years, Lowe and the Balloon Corp would provide reconnaissance for the battles of Yorktown, Seven Pines (Fair Oaks), Fredericksburg, Mechanicsville, and Chancellorsville. But Lowe’s information was often ignored by his commanding officers, and many were reluctant to trust a civilian employee of the Army.

The Battle of Fair Oaks, VA, May 31, 1862, “Intrepid” War Balloon in Distance, Photo Courtesy of National Park Service

Although Lowe reported that he was able to accurately call out Confederate positions in good weather, some Union Army members believed the reports were altered to "render their own importance greater, thereby insuring themselves what might be profitable employment." As a result, many Union generals distrusted the Balloon Corp’s information, instead favoring traditional methods of reconnaissance. George Armstrong Custer, who rode in Lowe’s balloons in April 1862, stated:

“The large majority of the army, without giving it a personal test, condemned and ridiculed the system of balloon reconnaissance”

Lowe filling balloon INTREPID from balloon CONSTITUTION at Fair Oaks, VA, 1862, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

Balloon Camp, Gaines' Hill, near Richmond, VA: telegraphing, reporting, and sketching during the Battle of Fair Oaks, June 1, 1862, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

End of the Balloon Corp

The Balloon Corp would not last to the end of the Civil War. In 1863, Lowe resigned after a dispute about his pay. Shortly after, the unit was rejected from joining Col. Albert Myer’s Signal School and then disbanded. 

Lowe retired to Pasadena, California, where he later won the Elliott Cresson Medal for the Invention Held to be Most Useful to Mankind for his work in the cold storage industry. He also founded the Mount Lowe Railway and the Citizens Bank of Los Angeles, which is now a part of Wells Fargo. His granddaughter,  Florence Lowe “Pancho” Barnes, was a pioneer aviator who broke Amelia Earheart’s air speed record in 1930.

Help Build Arlington's Community History

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Orville Wright Takes Flight at Ft. Myer

1908

Arlington is the home to the country’s first military test flights, which lead directly to the adoption of aircraft for military use. Orville Wright came to Arlington in 1908 to demonstrate his new flying machine for the U.S. Government and U.S. Army.

Wright and his assistants arrived in late August 1908, bringing the aircraft from Ohio. Over the course of several days, Wright would perform small flight tests at Ft. Myer in the hopes of selling the machine to the Army. Wright began making small test runs across the parade field on September 3, and by September 9, the flights began to last over an hour, with Orville flying 40mph 120 feet in the air, in front of huge crowds that gathered to watch as he broke multiple existing flight records.

Orville Wright, Lt. Thomas Selfridge, Major Squire, and Lt. Benjamin D. Foulois with flyer at Ft. Myer, September 1908, Photo Courtesy of Wright Brothers History

One of those watching was Gutzon Borglum, an American sculptor best known for working on Mount Rushmore. In an attempt to describe the plane, he said,

“Within stood the most unlikely, spider-like frame, with twin cotton covered, horizontal frames, one above the other, about six feet apart. There is nothing about the contraption that would suggest to the lay mind its possible use, should he find it unattended in a field; nothing that would suggest to him what it might do or that it was built for anything in particular."

Orville Wright and Lieutenant Lahm flying at Fort Myer, July 27, 1909, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

After witnessing the flight, he said,

“There is no action of the ‘wings’ so you do not think of birds... It is so simple, it annoys one. It is inconceivable, yet having seen it, it now seems the most natural thing in the air. One is amazed humankind has not built it before…As soon as the motor started, the plane gave a slight jump forward. The wind from the propellers drove the hats from the spectators' head…The crowd stood open mouthed, with murmurs of wonder and an occasional toot from an automobile horn; then as he passed over us everybody let go in an uproar of shouting and handclapping. The miracle had happened! Nothing can take this step made into space from man."

Although the tests started well, they would end in disaster. On September 17, Wright took Lt. Thomas Selfridge, an aspiring Army aviation expert, on a test flight. Shortly after takeoff, one of the propellers split, sending the aircraft into the ground. Wright would suffer serious but nonlife threatening injuries, and Lt. Selfridge would later die on the operating table, making him the first victim of an accident in a powered aircraft. Because of the failure, the U.S. Army delayed further tests of this version of the aircraft until the problems could be fixed.

Bystanders work to free Lt. Selfridge, 1908, Ft. Myer, Photo Courtesy of Arlington Cemetery

Determined not to let the fatal crash hurt their reputation, the Wrights resumed test flights in early July of the following year. Because of the highly publicized crash the year prior, thousands of people came to observe the tests. This included President Taft, members of Congress, Senators, high ranking Army officials, and other influential people such as Evelyn Roosevelt.

Senators Kean, Lodge, and Bacon with wives at Ft. Myer test flights, July 1909, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

Photographers at military flight trials, Ft. Myer, July 1909, Photo Courtesy of Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

 

The resumption of tests got off to a rocky start, requiring Wright to briefly return to Ohio to repair a torn wing. By July 12 however, Wright was able to consistently fly hour-long flights over Fort Myer. On the final acceptance test, Wright needed to fly 10 miles - from Fort Myer to Shooters Hill in Alexandria (now the George Washington Masonic Memorial), maintaining at least 40 mph and receiving a bonus of $1,000 for every mph he went faster.

Similar to the previous tests, Orville took passengers on test flights in the Arlington area to demonstrate the aircraft's speed and durability. On one flight, Wright took Major General Benjamin D. Foulouis, who described the event 50 years later:

“Orville Wright, in his quiet little voice, asked me if I wouldn’t be the observer on that trip and his navigator. He picked me, I found afterwards, because I was the smallest one of the group - less wind resistance, less gasoline…When I got into the airplane with him, he quietly turned to me and said, ‘If we have any trouble on this trip, I’m going to pick out the thickest clump of trees I can find and land in it’, which sent a little reminder to me that I’d picked out a course with no landing fields on it…”

Washington Post, July 31st, 1909, Access Provided by ProQuest

 

First Army Aeroplane Flight, Fort Myer, Virginia, July 1909, Video Courtesy of UK National Archives

Although Wright and Foulois had initially overshot Alexandria, they were able to successfully return and land back at Ft. Myer. The test was a resounding success. Wright’s last test run with Foulois passed all of the Army’s requirements, and they purchased the world’s first military aircraft for $30,000.

Lt. Thomas Selfridge would later be honored with the Selfridge Gate in Arlington Cemetery, and the 1909 Wright Military Flyer is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

Orville Wright flying over crowd at Ft. Myer, July 1909, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

Orville Wright flying, July 1909, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

Orville Wright flying above Ft. Myer, July 1909, Photo Courtesy of Library of Congress

Help Build Arlington's Community History

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Pelham Town

A Lost Arlington Community

Arlington in the early 1900s included many small Black communities. Today the best known among them are Hall’s Hill in North Arlington, Queen City in what is now the Pentagon area, and Green Valley in South Arlington.

One of the lesser known communities was Pelham Town, a small neighborhood near the Marymount Campus, between today’s 24th Street and N. Wakefield Street.

Map of Pelham Town from Arlington County Atlas, 1935, CLH Collections

Consisting primarily of members of the Pelham family, Pelham Town began in the 1860s, when Moses Pelham Sr. (1828-1904) and his brothers Gibson, Ed, and Burrell, moved to Arlington County from Culpeper, Virginia. Their father was freed from enslavement to the Pelham family in 1819 at the age of 21.

Pelham Sr. initially acquired one acre of land just northeast of Hall’s Hill. In 1874 he built his home and married Isabella Washington, and by 1894 he had acquired an additional acre. Isabella had eight children who lived to adulthood, and the family became an important part of the social support network for a community which sourced almost all of its services from within its boundaries during decades of segregation. In “History of Mt. Salvation Baptist Church (1879-2019),” Deaconess Portia A. Haskins wrote of how “During the late 1800s Moses Pelham Sr. was well regarded for selling some of his property to assist freed slaves in their quest for land ownership.” 

Upon the death of Moses Pelham Sr. in 1904, his land was divided among his six remaining children - Moses Jr., Burrell, Edward, John, Annie Spriggs (née Pelham), and Matilda Robinson (née Pelham) - who each established a home on the lot. 

Drawing of Pelham Town by W. Palmer, c.1940s, CLH Collections

Life in Pelham Town

William Pelham Sr. (1900-2003), the grandson of Moses Pelham Sr., remained as an influential community leader in Arlington his whole life. In a 1986 interview with the Arlington Library Oral History Project, he describes Pelham Town as a rural but close knit community. Life in Pelham Town included walking to school along a dirt Glebe Road, watching mules used for the construction of the Old Dominion Railroad, and baptisms in Spout Run near today’s intersection of Langston Blvd and Kirkwood Road.

Like much of Arlington at the time, houses had livestock including pigs and chickens, vegetable gardens, and no running water. Residents acquired water from a spring almost half a mile away until the neighborhood kids, “would dig that place in the ground until we got so far down in the ground one day a shovel fell on one of the boys' heads and then they cut it off.  And then the neighbors got together – and they finished the well, and that well was 75 feet down in the ground.”

Pelham Family's Community Involvement

Moses Pelham Sr. hosted some of the first prayer services led by Reverend Cyrus Carter after the Mount Salvation Baptist Church was organized in 1872. As one of the few African-American men able to own land at the time, he assisted in the purchase of a permanent church property in 1884. Two of his sons, Burrell, and Moses Jr., as well as his grandson William Pelham would serve as Deacons for the church.

The original church building would also house the predecessor to the Langston School, then called the Sumner School. By hosting school during the week and religious services on Sunday, it became the area's first local school for Black children, which was incredibly important to the community of Hall’s Hill.

Cover of History of Mt. Salvation Baptist Church by Deaconess Portia A. Haskins, CLH Collections

In “A View from Hall's Hill: African American Community Development in Arlington, Virginia from the Civil War to the Turn of the Century”, Author Lindsey Bestebreurtje writes,

"Schools were not only used for education but also to provide neighborhood children with a sense of community, connection, and insulation from negative outside white influences which they would be more likely to experience if they had to travel great distances beyond their communities.”

Segregation laws at the time resulted in severe underfunding and overcrowding, as the building only held two classrooms. Classes were often held at the nearby Oddfellows Hall until a new building was built for the school in 1925. Upon completion of the building, The Sumner School would be renamed the John M. Langston Elementary School in honor of the founding dean of Howard University Law School.  

The End of Pelham Town

Pelham Town ceased to exist in the mid 1900s due to the combination of pressure from local white developers and Jim Crow housing laws aimed to disenfranchise Black residents. A change in Arlington County’s housing laws after World War One required that every home be connected to the County water. However, according to William Pelham, “they put in city water and said you had to be connected to it or you couldn’t get an occupancy permit. But they wouldn’t let me connect my house. The white people who were moving in didn’t like my colored tenants. So I sold.” 

In addition, new roads constructed for a white housing development failed to connect to the existing streets in the community. This prevented residents in Pelham Town from having reasonable access to their homes. In “Up on the Hill: An Oral History of the Halls Hill Neighborhood in Arlington County, Virginia”, William Pelham remembers, “The technicality was they could not get in and out of the property…Now they’ve got condos over there. That’s how these properties get away from us.” 

William Pelham left Pelham Town in 1928 but continued to rent to Black residents until the 1940s.

Map of African-American Settlements in Arlington County, 1970, CLH Collections

Map of Alexandria County, Virginia for the Virginia Title Co., 1900, Library of Congress

Pelham Family

Many of the Pelham Family members stayed in Arlington and moved to the Hall’s Hill/Highview Park area. William Pelham became the longest serving Deacon at Mt. Salvation Baptist Church, serving over 50 years. The cemetery of the church was designated a historic district in 2021, and still holds the graves of many members of the Pelham family.

Mt. Salvation Baptist Church before the modern remodel, 1954, Photo Courtesy of InsideNova

Portrait and Quote of William Pelham, "History of Mt. Salvation Baptist Church" by Portia Haskins, CLH Collections

Help Build Arlington's Community History

The Center for Local History (CLH) collects, preserves, and shares resources that illustrate Arlington County’s history, diversity and communities. Learn how you can play an active role in documenting Arlington's history by donating physical and/or digital materials for the Center for Local History’s permanent collection.

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The USS Arlington

Arlington's Naval Voyage Through the 20th Century

The first USS Arlington, c. 1947;
Photo Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command

World War Two

The first United States Navy Ship to be named Arlington was a general cargo ship that was converted into a troop transport in 1944 for World War Two. Capable of carrying over 1,000 soldiers, the Arlington acted as a training vessel for sailors on the West Coast. It then became a troop transport at the end of the war.

The Arlington was decommissioned in 1946 and remained in the Navy’s reserve fleet until it was sold for scrap in the 1960s.

The second USS Arlington after conversion, c. 1960s;
Photo from CLH collections

Cold War Communications

As the technology of the Cold War advanced, need arose for a powerful communications ship that could relay messages anywhere across the world. In 1967, the former aircraft carrier USS SAIPAN was converted into a Communication Relay Ship and officially commissioned as the USS Arlington in honor of the Arlington Radio Towers, which had been the site of the first trans-Atlantic voice communication in 1915.

At a length of 684 feet, a crew of about 1,000 men, and a top speed of 33 knots, the Arlington was the ideal choice to act as a communication relay hub. After beating the USS Boston in a race to Guantanamo Bay, the USS Arlington earned a reputation as one of the fastest ships in the Navy’s fleet. Upon winning the race, the ship adopted the nickname the “Road Runner,” and its crew displayed a flag of the television cartoon character when entering port or pulled alongside another ship for refueling or to provide assistance. They also played the character’s theme song whenever the flag was raised.

After participating in NATO training exercises across Europe, the Arlington acted as communication support for US troops in Vietnam, most notably at the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1967.

President Nixon aboard the USS Arlington with Captain Murphree before the Apollo 11 landing, 1969;
Photo courtesy of NavSource.

Assisting the Space Race

Thanks to its advanced radio and communication capabilities, the USS Arlington assisted in the return of several Apollo spaceships. In December, 1968, it served as the primary communication ship for the recovery of Apollo 8, and in May, 1969, it assisted in the recovery of Apollo 10.

Because the USS Arlington was stationed near the landing zone, it was chosen as one of the main ships in assisting in the recovery of the Apollo 11 astronauts after they reached the moon in July 1969. The role of the USS Arlington was classified, and not revealed to the public until years after the landings.

The USS Arlington’s contribution to the Apollo missions would be its last for the US Navy. The Arlington returned to the United States in January of 1970 to be decommissioned and was officially sold as scrap in 1976.

Although the ship was only formally active for 4 years, it was awarded 7 campaign stars for its efforts in Vietnam.

The third USS Arlington participates in recovery training of the Orion capsule, 2013;
Photo courtesy of NASA

USS Arlington Today

In 2004, the US Navy decided to name 3 of the Navy’s new ships in honor of the 9/11 attacks. The USS Arlington was launched in 2010, along with the sister ships USS New York and USS Somerset.

In 2013, the new USS Arlington helped NASA in stationary recovery training of the Orion spacecraft.

The USS Arlington honors the 184 victims and thousands of emergency, fire and rescue personnel of Arlington Country and localities in the National Capital Region who provided critical emergency assistance after the attack. The ship was built with a museum to honor the victims of the Pentagon which includes pieces of steel from the Pentagon 9-11 crash site. To read more about the USS Arlington, visit https://www.arlingtonva.us/Government/Topics/ussarlington

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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Lustron Steel Homes in Arlington

1947-1950: A Slice of American Architectural History

“If Lustron fails, let us forever quit talking about mass-produced houses” - Senator Ralph Flanders, Suffolk News Herald, August 9, 1949.

Lustron Home Advertisement - Late 1940’s, Courtesy of Washington University.

By the end of World War Two, Arlington County was in the middle of a housing crisis. The completion of the Pentagon in 1943 made the area a prime destination for government workers as well as troops returning after the war, more than doubling Arlington’s population from 57,000 to 135,000 between 1940 and 1950.  

 Residential construction had almost completely stopped during the war years due to materials rationing. One solution to this nation-wide housing crisis came from inventor Carl Strandland, who converted his steel factory in Columbus Ohio - which had built bombers during the war - into an assembly line for cheap, pre-made, steel houses that required as little maintenance as possible. 

In 1947, Strandland’s factory began to turn out the components for “fireproof, termite proof, and vermin proof” Lustron Homes - 11 of which ended up in Arlington. 

Lustron Advertisement from Life Magazine, April 19th, 1948; photo courtesy of Make it Mid-Century

The Lustron Home

Each house was created piece by piece on an assembly line in the main factory in Columbus, Ohio and then shipped unassembled by truck to the desired location. Once the components arrived, it would be assembled by a licensed "Builder/Dealer." Most of the homes in Arlington were constructed by local companies Carlton Construction or Construction Associates. Construction could take anywhere from 9 days to 3 weeks, depending on the experience of the crew.

The homes were one story, constructed from steel with a porcelain steel enamel cover available in typical 1950’s colors such as surf blue, dove gray, desert tan, and maize yellow. The inside was designed to be modern and futuristic, aimed at making life as easy as possible for young families.

To set Lustron apart from other prefabricated homes, design features included a round fireplace and a radiant ceiling heating system, which integrated with the metal walls to trap heat. They also came with a built-in combination washing machine/dishwasher, bookshelves, and wall units.

Floor Plan of Westchester Deluxe Model; image courtesy of Make it Mid-Century

 

Much of the appeal of the Lustron Homes came from the ease of cleaning; the metal paneled interior walls were easily washed with water. Homeowners could simply take a hose to the outside of their house in order to clean it.

The affordable price of the homes put them in high demand; they began at about $6,000 but had jumped to almost $10,000 by 1950 in an effort to make the company more profitable.

Lustron Homes in Arlington

After a model Lustron Home was placed in Foggy Bottom, over 1200 orders were placed in the DMV area in a few months. But due to strict housing codes that affected what kinds of homes were built, difficulty obtaining permits, and delivery issues, only 11 homes were completed in Arlington. The largest concentration of these homes were 5 of the Westchester Deluxe Model 2 homes, built in the Columbia Forest neighborhood in 1949 as part of a failed planned community of 100 prefabricated, metal homes.

Although a large collection of Lustron Homes were built at the Marine Corp Base in Quantico, only 4 more were built in the DMV area before the company went out of business in 1950.

Columbia Forest Lustron Home, Arlington, 1998; CLH photo.

Columbia Forest Lustron Home, Arlington, 2022; CLH photo.

Preservation

Of the 11 original Lustron Homes in Arlington, only two remain. Most were destroyed in the last 20 years, to make way for larger, more modern housing.

In 2005, local Lustron owner Clifford M. Krowne offered to donate his nearly original Lustron Home to Arlington in exchange for the County’s removal of the house from his property. The next year, the County Board accepted responsibility of the house by disassembling and placing it into storage until a suitable use could be found for it.

Krowne’s home experienced a short period of national fame when it was loaned to the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the exhibit, “Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling,'' from May to November 2008. Only partially reconstructed for the exhibit, the Lustron Home helped to illustrate the fad of pre-made houses in the 20th century.

Krowne Lustron being dismantled: the crew removes the steel framing pieces supporting the chimney flue, and the crane lifts another whole roof truss off and over the shell of the house. 2006 photo by Cynthia Liccese-Torres and Kim A. O'Connell, courtesy of CRM Journal, National Park Service.

After the exhibit in New York, Arlington County placed the Krowne Lustron Home back into storage until 2011, when the County Board voted unanimously to donate it to the Ohio Historical Connection, which holds the Lustron Corporate Archives. Reassembled as the centerpiece of the exhibit “1950’s: Building the American Dream,” the Home has seen over 870,000 visitors since 2013.

Lustron Memories

Although some have described the houses as, “like living in a filing cabinet,” or complained that they “had felt a draft through the walls on cold, gusty nights,” the homes were also popular and well received. A 1980 Washington Post interview with a homeowner described her home experience living in a Lustron Home as, “sturdy and well built. Snug-fitting doors and windows make them very comfortable...she particularly appreciates the ease with which she can clean the attractive, hard-finished interior.”

Do you have any memories of living in or visiting a Lustron Home in Arlington? We want to hear from you!

The Center for Local History invites the Arlington Community to play an active role in documenting our history by donating stories and materials to our permanent collection. Learn more https://library.arlingtonva.us/center-for-local-history/center-for-local-history-call-for-donations/

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Marking Arlington’s Border in Stone

You might know that Arlington was once a part of Washington D.C., but did you know that Arlington’s boundary stones are some of the country’s oldest federal monuments?

These stones were created as a result of the Residence Act of 1790, which gave President George Washington permission to select an area for a new Federal capital along the Potomac River.

To facilitate this deal, both Maryland and Virginia agreed to cede a section of land, with Virginia ceding much of what is now Arlington. Since 1731, the Virginia land had been designated as part of Fairfax County.

Washington selected the southernmost section of the Potomac River in order to include as much of Virginia and the city of Alexandria as possible. Although Arlington was largely rural at the time, Alexandria was one of the most important port cities in the region.

Boundary Stone No. 7 SW at Carlin Elementary School, photo 2022, CLH.

The Survey

Once the boundaries had been chosen, then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson appointed Major Andrew Ellicott to survey the 10 square mile area for an official border. Ellicott was chosen because he was one of the most prominent surveyors of the time and possessed some of the most advanced mapping equipment of the time period. He was joined by Benjamin Banneker, a free black man who had taught himself mathematics and astronomy.

The men set up camp at Jones Point, Alexandria and worked with a small team to chart the stars and complete the necessary calculations for drawing the borders.

Arlington at the time was mostly rural with dense forests, making surveying work extremely dangerous for the men in the field. Many suffered from the harsh climate, influenza, and one worker was even killed by a falling tree.

Chart showing the original boundary milestones of the District of Columbia / Fred E. Woodward (1906).
Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The First Stone

The first boundary stone was set up at Jones Point on April 15th, 1791. Ellicott and his team (now without Banneker, who had retired due to his health shortly after the first marker was placed), then began the process of placing the remaining 39 boundary stones across Virginia and Maryland.

Each stone was made of sandstone from Aquia Creek and placed at one-mile intervals. Engraved on each marker was “Jurisdiction of the United States”, with the accompanying state and year the stone was placed.

By the end of 1791, 14 stones had been placed in Virginia and the remaining 26 were erected in Maryland the following year. It would take another 10 years for the District of Columbia to be formally incorporated, with the federal capital remaining in Philadelphia until 1801.

The First Boundary Stone under Jones Point Lighthouse, Alexandria in 2010; Image Courtesy of Something Original at Wikipedia

Preservation Today

The stones would remain in place while the face of the city changed around them, often leading to some stones being buried or lost in the growth of nature. The section of Virginia that is now Arlington and Alexandria would remain as part of D.C. until 1847, when unhappy Virginia citizens forced the federal government to give the land back to the Commonwealth.

Boundary stone preservation efforts began in 1915, as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) began placing iron cages around the remaining markers. Although some of the remaining monuments today lie on private property, there are 36 stones that can be visited across the D.C. area.

To explore the Boundary Stones online, visit the Boundary Stones of DC Story Map

Boundary Stone No. 9 SW at Benjamin Banneker Park, Arlington, photo 2022, CLH.

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Ronald (Ron) Deskins: A Quiet Pioneer for Civil Rights

The Center for Local History reflects on the passing of Ronald Deskins, a pioneer of the Civil Rights movement in Arlington County.

In Defiance of Massive Resistance

At the young age of 12, Ron Deskins played a crucial role in integrating Virginia public schools. On Feb. 2 1959, Deskins, along with classmates Michael Jones, Gloria Thompson, and Lance Newman, entered then all-white Stratford Junior High in quiet but determined defiance of Virginia Senator Harry Byrd’s policy of Massive Resistance.

This historic moment – often referred to by the press at the time as “The Day Nothing Happened” owing to the lack of violence – is now marked by banners at Dorothy Hamm Middle School, housed since 2019 at the original site of Stratford Junior High School.

"I was pretty nervous that first day," Deskins said at a 2016 tribute to the actions taken in 1959. He went on to mention that a few students "made it their business to make our lives miserable…They were not successful…Although they called us plenty of names."

Three police officers stand at the entrance to Stratford Jr. High School as the four black students enrolled in the previously all-white school arrive for classes in Arlington, Va., on Feb. 3, 1959. One of the officers records the scene with a movie camera. Approaching the entrance are, left to right, Lance Newman, 13, Ronald Deskins, 12, Michael Jones, 12, and Gloria Thompson, 12. (AP Photo)

Edward Hummer, a fellow Stratford and W-L student, interviewed Ronald Deskins for induction into the W-L Athletics Hall of Fame in 2018. At the time, Deskins was volunteering at a public library in Berryville, VA. Hummer recalled the experience of speaking with Deskins about his life:

“I was struck when I read about his very first reaction upon entering his first classroom...The four black kids were taken in a rear door to escape the throng at the front door…the other kids in Ron's homeroom were already seated and had been prepared for his arrival. When he was escorted in a few minutes after the bell, all their heads naturally turned to him as he entered. His first thought on seeing all those heads turn his way was to say to himself, "It's just me."

Ronald Deskins, Michael Jones, Lance Newman, and Gloria Thompson walked into Stratford Junior High School on February 2, 1959. (AP Photo)

Dorothy Hamm Assistant Principal Lisa Moore remarked that it is "our expectation, for all our students and staff to know this history. The history that took place in this building, they need to know that, and live that."

"Our hearts are devastated," Moore added. "This was a huge loss for our community."

Mr. Deskins’ self-effacing manner was typical of his attitude towards his accomplishments and the contributions he made during his lifetime, including his role in the integration of the Fairfax County Fire Rescue Department. Mr. Deskins was the fifth Black firefighter employed by Fairfax County and he helped establish Northern Virginia Minority Firefighters Combined. He eventually achieved the rank of Captain and retired after 34 years of service.

Edward Hummer remembers the man who thought of himself as just me as “quite a guy. It was a great pleasure and a great honor for me to get to know him so many years later when he was inducted into the W-L Athletic Hall of Fame. I am greatly saddened by his death.”

The Center for Local History (CLH) at the Arlington Public Library collects, preserves and shares historical documents that tell the history of Arlington County, its citizens, organizations, businesses and social issues.

The CLH’s Community Archives includes thousands of pages of material related to the desegregation of Arlington Public Schools, and makes these materials available to students, researchers, scholars, authors, teachers and the community.

To learn more visit the Project DAPS website and read the 2018 blogpost, The Desegregation of Arlington Public Schools.

Because there are always more layers of history to find and examine, the CLH continually seeks community donations and oral histories; use this form to send a message to the Center for Local History or contact us at localhistory@arlingtonva.us.

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Milton Rowe: Dedication to Country, Community and Family

Roots, Family and Legacy

Milton Isiah Rowe, Sr., (1925-2016) was born in Washington, D.C., to Hester and Isiah Rowe. His family moved to South Arlington, a community where they had longstanding family ties, in 1927, when Rowe was a young child.

With this move, Milton Rowe began his long life as a Green Valley resident. Over the next 89 years he served in many community and civic roles across the County, and became part of an Arlington legacy.

Milton Rowe

Family Ties in Arlington

Milton Rowe's great-grandfather was William Augustus Rowe (1834-1907), a pivotal figure in the early development of the Green Valley neighborhood. William Rowe had been born enslaved, and later escaped to Freedmans Village in Arlington.

Freedmans Village was established in 1863 on land seized from Robert E. Lee and occupied by the Union Army during the Civil War and became a thriving community for freed slaves.

Ink painting on brown canvas of Freedman's Village

Artist representation of Freedmans Village, circa 1864.

William Rowe first trained as a blacksmith and later served in numerous civic roles, including as the first Black member of the Board of Supervisors and Arlington District Board Chairman.

Learn more about William Augustus Rowe in our blogpost from March, 2021.

Map of Freedmans Village, circa July 1865.

William Rowe

A portrait of William A. Rowe currently hangs in the Center for Local History.

Growing up in Green Valley before WWII

Milton Rowe first attended Kemper Elementary School in Green Valley. At this point, Arlington’s public school system was still segregated. Kemper was the school designated for Black children, and had opened in 1875 within Lomax A.M.E. Zion Church.

By 1893 the school had moved into a new brick, two-story building constructed by Noble Thomas, the first Black contractor in the County. Hoffman-Boston School was the only secondary school available to Black children in Arlington, and many chose to commute outside of the County for educational options.

Rowe attended Garnet-Patterson Junior High School and Armstrong Technical High School in Washington, D.C., for his secondary education. Armstrong was one of only two high schools open to Black students at the beginning of the 20th century

During and After WWII

After high school, Milton Rowe went on to work at the Pentagon and subsequently enlisted into the Coast Guard, where he served on the USS Pocatello during WWII.

Upon his honorable discharge, Rowe returned to the Arlington area to work at the Pentagon and on March 31, 1945 married Ruth Mae Robinson, who also worked at the Pentagon as a typist. They were married in Lomax A.M.E. Zion Church, the church William Rowe and his wife Ellen helped organize in 1863 and where William Rowe had also been an early member.

Milton Rowe, date unknown.

Ruth and Milton Rowe went on to have four children – Gloria, Milton, Jr., Elroy and Brian (as of June 1, 2022, there are 2 daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, 12 grandchildren, 11 great grandchildren and 3 great, great grandchildren).

In 1995, Milton and Ruth celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Ruth died in 2004.

Ruth and Milton Rowe.

The Rowe Family at Ruth and Milton's 50th wedding anniversary party.

Paul Dunbar Housing Community

Milton and Ruth Rowe were early owners of a home in the Paul Dunbar housing community in Green Valley, a wartime housing unit for Black residents built in 1944 by the Federal Public Housing Authority. They featured 15 masonry buildings with 86 units.

The Dunbar Homes were one of two major housing cooperatives established during the war, along with the George Washington Carver Homes. After the war, Black residents pooled their resources and bought the housing complexes, establishing the first two Black-owned housing cooperatives in the country. The Dunbar Mutual Homes Association maintained the property until 2006, when it was demolished.

In 1955, the couple built and relocated the family into a home near the Army Navy Country Club in south Arlington.

A historic marker celebrating the original members of the Paul Lawrence Dunbar Mutual Homes Association is located at the corner of Shirlington Road and South Four Mile Run, across from the W&OD Trailhead.

Professional Butler for Embassies and the White House

Rowe retired from the Pentagon after 37 years of service with the army, receiving many letters of commendation for his outstanding performance of duty.

He continued his career as a professional butler, a second job he held throughout his working life.

In this role, he worked at various embassies and the home of Robert F. Kennedy in McLean. There, he remembered meeting John F. Kennedy, whom he once loaned a pair of boots to on a snowy Virginia day. 

Rowe also served at numerous events at the White House, where he met many of the presidents of the 20th century. 

Rowe at work at the White House.

White House butlers with President George W. Bush and his wife Barbara .

Community Engagement

Milton Rowe was active in the Green Valley community and served on the Trustee Boards and various committees at Lomax A.M.E. Zion.

He was also a member of the Nauck Citizen’s Association (now the Green Valley Civic Association), the Arlington Housing Committee, the NAACP, the Y.M.C.A., the American Legion, and several seniors’ groups. He was also an advisor to his sons’ Boy Scouts Troop #589, which has a historic legacy as one of the first local scouting groups for Black children, established in 1952 by Ernest Johnson.

A February 17, 1962, Northern Virginia Sun article mentions Milton Rowe’s role as chairman of the Men of Lomax organization, along with details from a church event. Newspaper image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

In 2010, NBC reported on Milton Rowe in a feature about the legacy of Freedmans Village on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery. The cemetery was constructed on the grounds of Freedmans Village, which had been closed by the government in the 1890s to make way for the burial grounds. The closure of Freedmans Village displaced the nearly 1,000 Black residents who had made their homes there. No markers exist to commemorate the freed slaves who had once lived on the land.

Milton Rowe’s life touched many important parts of the County’s history, and his legacy lives on through his many achievements and experiences that made him a pillar of both Green Valley and Arlington at large.

Learn more: Milton Rowe is featured in Dr. Alfred O. Taylor’s book “Bridge Builders of Nauck/Green Valley: Past and Present.”

The Center for Local History at the Arlington Public Library collects, preserves and shares historical documents that tell the history of Arlington County, its citizens, organizations, businesses and social issues. The CLH operates the Research Room at Central Library and the Community Archives program.

Because there are always more layers of history to find and examine, the CLH continually seeks community donations and oral histories.

Use this form to send a message to the Center for Local History or contact us at localhistory@arlingtonva.us.

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The Henry Louis Holmes Library, 1940-1949

Created by Arlington's Black Residents to Serve Their Community During Segregation

What follows is the first in-depth history of the Holmes Library, and of segregated library services in Arlington County. Drawn from primary source material held in the Arlington Community Archives as well as the work of researchers at other regional libraries, this history aims to honor the volunteer-led efforts of Arlington’s Black community, and to answer two critical questions: When and why did Arlington desegregate its public libraries?

The story of Arlington’s first library for Black patrons is one of an extraordinary grassroots effort led by members of Arlington’s Black community.

The Henry Louis Holmes Library was established in 1940 as a community-led facility to fill in the gap created by segregationist County and state policies. In order to bring books and material resources to the County’s Black residents who had been denied such services, a group of Black Arlingtonians worked together in order to establish an independent branch.

The Holmes Library would later join the still-segregated County library system as the only branch available to Black Arlingtonians until its closure in 1949, and the subsequent desegregation of Arlington's libraries in 1950.

 

Exterior of the Henry Louis Holmes
Library branch, 1946. The building was located in the George Washington Carver Homes complex at 13th Street South and South Queen Streets.

An Exclusionary System

Arlington’s at-large library system began as a series of volunteer-run organizations, which were later incorporated into the County in 1937. Volunteer and civic groups across the County’s neighborhoods started five local branches in the early 20th century: Glencarlyn, Cherrydale, Clarendon, Aurora Hills, and Arlington (later Columbia Pike).

After operating independently for years, in 1936 the Arlington County Library Association was formed, and the following year Libraries became an official County department with a budget that included an allocation of funds for the hiring of a library director.

From their founding, these branches only provided services to white constituents.

Libraries in Other Municipalities

The neighboring jurisdictions around Arlington were similarly segregated during the Jim Crow era, and followed a similar pattern of segregated volunteer-led branches that incorporated into segregated municipal systems. From the 1930s-1960s, libraries became an increasingly significant issue in the fight for equal access to public services, in both the state and the nation. In some places, it took decades to achieve integrated facilities.

In one notable local case, in August 1939, a group of Black Alexandrians held a sit-in at the Queen Street branch of the Alexandria City Public Library, protesting the denial of resources to Black members of the community. Police arrived and arrested the protesters for “disorderly conduct.” Samuel Wilbert Tucker (1913-1990), a lawyer who led the demonstration, was prepared to challenge the City in court, but the City stalled negotiations in an effort to resist integration.

Against Tucker’s wishes for integration, the City instead built a segregated library for Black patrons, which would remain the only option available to Black Alexandria residents until desegregation in the 1960s. The Robert H. Robinson Library was incorporated into the Alexandria system less than a year after the sit-ins under the “separate but equal” segregationist doctrine.

At this time, the only library available in Arlington to Black children was the school library at Hoffman-Boston School, which operated as the only secondary school for Black students until the public school system desegregated in 1959.

Students study in the Hoffman-Boston School
library, circa 1950. Image from RG 307.

An Association to Organize the Library

Facing this lack of local and accessible resources, a group of Black Arlington residents, without financial assistance from the County, came together to establish the Henry Louis Holmes Library Association in July 1940, to maintain a library for use by the Black community. Since this library would serve Black residents across the County, representatives from organizations across Arlington were also called to join in in the efforts. Early members represented the Civic Association of Halls Hill, the Nauck neighborhood and the Jennie Dean Club.

A Board of Directors was also assembled, including the Reverend A. Mackley (representing Mount Olive Baptist Church), Mrs. Henry Chapman, Mrs. Jessie Pollard, Mrs. Annie Belcher, and Mrs. Nora Drew (Mrs. Drew was the matriarch of the Drew family and mother of Charles Drew, a pioneering surgeon and founder of the modern-day blood bank. Her daughter, Nora Drew Gregory, later became a well-known library advocate as a library board trustee for Washington, D.C.).

The group then selected officers and committees, including the Constitution; Name; Books; Accessioning and Cataloging; Program; Ways and Means; Publicity; and Rooms committees. Selected as its first president was Kitty Bruce, with Marie Ponce serving as secretary. Kitty Bruce was chairwoman of the Arlington Inter-Racial Commission and a teacher at the Francis Junior High School in Washington, D.C., a school for Black children living in the Foggy Bottom and Georgetown neighborhoods.

The first page of the Holmes Library Association Constitution. It is notable that the library association, while formed with the intention of serving the Black community, wrote that “Any individual who is interested in the library may become a member by making it known and participating in the work of the association.”

Honoring the Past

In August 1940, the Library Association voted to honor Henry Louis Holmes in both its name and the name of its forthcoming branch. Holmes had been a prominent local civic leader, serving as the elected Commissioner of Revenue for Alexandria from 1877 to 1904. Previously enslaved, Holmes had come to Freedman’s Village in Arlington in his early life. He gained political success in the Reconstruction-era boom of Black political leaders, and was involved with the Radical Republican party, as well as in fraternal organizations such as the Masons and Odd Fellows and as a trustee of St. John’s Baptist Church. He also founded the Butler-Holmes community, a Black streetcar neighborhood in what is now the Penrose neighborhood.

In making this decision, the Association sought the blessing of Mrs. Emma Clifford, Holmes’ daughter, for use of the name. Mrs. Clifford wholeheartedly approved of the naming decision and donated a portrait of Mr. Holmes to the library as well as a set of encyclopedias.

Left: Portrait of Henry L. Holmes, date and artist unknown. Image courtesy of the “Built By the People Themselves” digital exhibit.

Right: The portrait of Holmes is currently located in the offices of the Commissioner of Revenue on the second floor of the Bozman Government Building. It was donated in 1985 by the Arlington Links Club, which described it as having once hung in the original Holmes library building. Current Commissioner of Revenue Ingrid Morroy, who was elected in November 2003, is the second person of color, since Holmes, to hold the position in the history of the office. Image courtesy of Susan T. Anderson, Communications Director for the Commissioner of Revenue.

In August 1940, the library formally requested to be housed in the basement of Mount Olive Baptist Church, which was located at 700 South Arlington Ridge Road between Columbia Pike and Washington Boulevard in the Johnson’s Hill/Arlington View neighborhood.

This site was recognized as a temporary location for the library, which was expected to grow in the years to come. By September, the church had formally granted their request in turn, with a few stipulations regarding maintenance and upkeep. For one, the church would not charge the library rent, but asked for an occasional donation for things like the custodian’s salary and fuel.

Letter from Marie Ponce and Kitty Bruce to the Mount Olive Church requesting use of their space for the Henry Louis Holmes Library.

Finding a Home for the New Library

The library initially supplied its catalog with donated books, which came from organizations such as the Alpha Gamma and Iota Chi Lambda sororities, and book showers hosted by other local civic groups. It was also noted that some books and shelves were donated from the Clarendon Library Association, as initiated by the Association's president Mrs. H.S. Cowman and a Mrs. Rice.

In addition, members of the association wrote letters seeking book recommendations from the historian and scholar Charles H. Wesley – the then-dean of the Howard University Graduate School – and Carter G. Woodson, the renowned Washington-D.C.-based historian, and the founder of Black History Month.

Letter of response from Charles H. Wesley to Holmes Library Association President Kitty Bruce regarding suggestions for books related to Black life for the Holmes Library.

Opening Ceremony

The Henry Louis Holmes Library formally opened on November 14, 1940, a date chosen to align with both National Book Week and National Education Week (Opening program 1 and 2).

Among the festivities marking its debut was a speech by the Rev. Dr. J. Francis Gregory, member of the department of English at the Miner Teachers College (Dr. Gregory’s grandson Francis A. Gregory would become the first Black member of the Washington, D.C., library board of trustees, and was the husband of Nora Drew Gregory. He is the namesake of the Francis A. Gregory Neighborhood Library in Washington, D.C.) Dr. Gregory addressed the crowd and delivered a speech, during which he stated: “The library in any community should be a center of activity in any community, serving as a social, cultural, ethical and spiritual, as well as intellectual, recreational center.” (The Formal Opening of the Henry Louis Holmes Library-1). He also gifted the library a copy of “The Life of Frederick Douglass,” a biography on the famous orator and abolitionist written by his father, James Monroe Gregory.

Program from the Holmes Library opening at Mt. Olive Church on November 14, 1940.

Another Home for the Holmes

The library was based in the Mount Olive Church basement until 1942, when the church property was taken over by the U.S. government. The church was ordered by the War Department to vacate the property in July 1942 , to make way for roadways leading to the Pentagon’s facilities. The church reopened at a new site at 1600 14th Street South in the Johnson’s Hill/Arlington View neighborhood in 1944.

The original Mount Olive building,
circa 1938. From RG 06.

In the meantime, the Holmes Library Association ran programs to benefit the community, including prominent speakers from the broader D.C. community. These included an address by Dr. Rayford Logan, a renowned Black historian, scholar, and professor emeritus at Howard University.

The Holmes Library found its next home in the basement of Lomax A.M.E. Zion Church, where it reopened on September 5, 1942. The Lomax site brought with it new developments, such as a children’s story hour.

Left: Flyer advertising the debut of the Holmes Library in the basement of Lomax church, its second home after Mount Olive.
Right: Lomax A.M.E. Zion at 2706 South 24th Street, taken August 31, 1996.

The Holmes Branch Incorporates into the County

Since founding the Holmes Library Association, the group had discussed joining with the County library system at a future date. In its initial meetings in July 1940, early long-term plans included eventually seeking financial assistance from the County. The first step in this was meeting County requirements via the American Library Association, which required 1,500 books to qualify as an official library. In its July 25, 1940, meeting minutes, Secretary Marie Ponce wrote: “It is hoped that from this beginning we can eventually work up the 1,500 books required before we can be recognized by the Library association.”

In February 1941 it was reiterated that the group would attempt to seek County aid (rather than state aid), and a Study and Plan Committee was formed to “carefully study out a plan to get aid from the County.” Plans around seeking County aid were always in the context of maintaining the Holmes Library separately, rather than as part of an effort to integrate the County library system.

In February 1944, members of the Holmes Library Association met with Mildred Blattner, the County Librarian. By this point, the Holmes Library had surpassed the American Library Association’s requirement of 1,500 books, and offered to turn over its collection of 2,500 books to the County. In March 23 letters to County Board Chair Leo Lloyd and County Manager Frank Hanrahan, the Holmes Association asked to be included in the July 1944 County library budget. On March 25, Lloyd replied that their request had been received favorably, and on April 5, 1944, Holmes Library Association President Kitty Bruce appeared before the County Board to formally appeal for inclusion of the Holmes as a County branch.

Letters exchanged between Kitty Bruce and Leo Lloyd in March 1944
signal the incorporation of the Holmes Library into the County Library system.

Bruce and the Holmes Library Association were successful. The Holmes Library – now the Holmes Branch – was eventually bequeathed $2,100 from the County Board to open its new branch location, which would formally be a part of the County library system. This site would be the library’s first independent and freestanding building. The County also established a deposit station in the Hoffman-Boston School library in 1945.

Holmes’ Home in the Carver Homes

The Holmes Branch’s final location was in an administrative building in the George Washington Carver Homes complex at 13th Street South and South Queen Streets. The Carver Homes had begun as a Federal Public Housing Authority project in 1943 to house displaced families and individuals largely from East Arlington and Queen City whose homes had been razed during the construction of the Pentagon. By 1944, the housing complex consisted of 270 trailers and 100 temporary public-financed housing units. The same year, after a visit from first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the government commissioned the George Washington Carver Homes, a permanent, 8-building apartment complex in Arlington View. This, along with the Dunbar Homes, a similar permanent housing complex, was completed in 1944.

The County eventually set aside $2,100 for the Holmes Branch upon its incorporation into the County Library System. The budget allocated funds for the purchase of books, supplies, and the hiring of a part-time librarian.

The Holmes Branch opened on the Carver Homes land on June 25, 1944, and was led by branch assistant Constance (Connie) Spencer. The occasion was marked by a robust celebration, featuring a speech by longtime association member Nora Drew, and an address by Howard University Library’s Dorothy McAllister. Branch librarian Madge Sydnor and branch assistant Rosaline Brooks joined the staff the following year.

Program from the June 25, 1944, opening of the Holmes Library.

At this point, the activities of the Holmes Library Association largely slowed, as their efforts in fundraising and staffing the library were absorbed by the County. Upon absorbing the Holmes collections into the wider County system, about 1,200 volumes were discarded after being labeled as not meeting branch standards, and 250 books were added from books gifted to the County and other copies.

In some ways, while County aid expanded the scope of the Holmes Library, inequalities and still persisted in how the County operated the branch. In an initial letter from Mildred Blattner to County Manager Frank Hanrahan, she wrote that “Since the reading habits of the colored population are not established I think it advisable to go rather slowly, providing popular books for the adult and standards for the children, until we can create reading habits that warrant a wider scope.”

A librarian and two children inside the Holmes Library Branch, 1946.

In some of the earliest aggregate circulation statistics between the branches in annual reports, the Holmes Branch consistently had the lowest number of total books. In the 1946-1947 annual reports, the Holmes had about half of the collection of the next lowest-stocked branch, Glencarlyn. From 1948-1949, only 113 additions were made to the Holmes’ collection, while the other branches received additions of anywhere between 500-1,482 books.

1946-1947 Total Book Collection:

Screen Shot 2022-02-15 at 2.04.07 PM

Forced Closure

The Holmes Branch remained open until 1949, when the branch was shuttered along with the sale of the Carver Homes property. After the end of World War II, Congress directed the Public Housing Authority to dispose of the Carver Homes and the Dunbar Homes. The properties were offered to the County for sale, which initially rejected the offers. In response, Black residents founded two cooperatives to purchase the former wartime housing - the Paul Lawrence Dunbar and George Washing Carver Mutual Associations.

The cooperatives’ bids were accepted, and the groups became the first two Black-owned cooperatives in the United States. The cooperatives sought to keep affordable housing options open, as other property developers could have excluded Black residents. Restrictive covenants and other segregated housing laws made purchasing homes and property exceedingly difficult for Black Arlingtonians, along with a general lack of available affordable housing.

Unfortunately, this housing victory came at the expense of the Holmes Branch. In July 1949, in a letter to County Manager A.T. Lundberg, the general housing manager of the Carver Homes reported that the library building was to be demolished to make room for further development.

Article from the Northern Virginia Sun on August 12, 1949, detailing the sale of the Carver Homes. Image courtesy of Virginia Chronicle.

In response, the Holmes Library Association reactivated in an attempt to save the branch. Mildred Blattner, who had corresponded with the housing manager and the Association, had suggested that continuation of the branch would be possible if a suitable new location was found. The Association swiftly located a new site, near the John H. Langston School, of which the group wrote “we feel that a branch would meet with the enthusiastic response of people in the area.” However, this option never came to fruition.

The children’s book collections – amounting to about 2,000 books – of the Holmes Library were subsequently moved to the library at the Hoffman-Boston School, where they continued to be circulated as public library holdings until 1960. At this point, the 1,617 volumes were likely absorbed by the Hoffman-Boston library, which continued to operate until its final class graduated in 1964.

In library reports, the only staff member listed for Hoffman-Boston was a “Custodian” whose name was not given and was referred to as a “Teacher at the School.” However, Hoffman-Boston in fact had a longtime school librarian whose name was Mildred Johnson.

The rest of the books from the Holmes collection were put into a storage shed behind the Clarendon Branch and used on occasion to replace copies or books or as duplicates if needed in the main library system.

Mildred Johnson, librarian at the Hoffman-Boston School library,
from its 1962 yearbook.

Members of the Library Club in the Hoffman-Boston Library, from the 1953 yearbook.

A Quiet Desegregation

In 1950, Arlington quietly reported that it had desegregated its libraries following the 1949 closure of the Holmes branch. The first mention of desegregation appears in the Library Department Annual Report for 1949-1950. Under the heading “Library Service for Colored Citizens,” it reported “In January 1950, lacking a branch library for the colored citizens, the County Manager approved the use of all branches by all residents of the County.” This was also listed as the date of desegregation in a 1964 report from the Community Council for Social Progress, and mention of library service for colored citizens does not appear in any subsequent annual reports, beyond mention of circulation statistics for the Hoffman-Boston library deposit station.

Page from the 1949-1950 annual report that details the approval of “the use of all branches by all residents of the County” by the County Manager.

While Arlington’s libraries reported themselves as being open to all residents in 1950, the precise catalyst for desegregation is unclear. Beyond the pragmatic and economic implications of the branch’s closure, this decision may have also been influenced by a 1946 law passed within the Virginia Code, as Chapter 170 of the Laws of Assembly, requiring that libraries receiving state aid would serve all residents. Many library systems used this language to interpret separate but equal services permissible under this stipulation, as Arlington also had done within its system. Previously, the law surrounding libraries had stipulated that “The service of books in County library systems receiving state aid shall be free and given to all parts of the county, region, city or town.” This added specificity in the 1946 law may have prompted the library to integrate rather than continue to maintain separate facilities for Black residents.

The timeline of desegregation has also been historically misreported in library accounts. Research initiated by the Fairfax County Public Library's Virginia Room found that in a 1963 unpublished thesis titled "Integration in Public Library Service in Thirteen Southern States," written by Bernice Lloyd Bell, surveys were sent out to municipal branches across the South regarding desegregation progress. In its response, Arlington indicated that “the library has always been open to all races.” The survey respondent (who is unknown) also suggested that neither the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision nor economic factors influenced the decision to integrate.

Survey results from Bernice Lloyd Bell’s unpublished 1963 thesis “Integration in Public Library Service in Thirteen Southern States.”

While the 1954 Brown vs. Board response aligns with the timeline of the 1950 decision, the statement that the libraries had “always” been open to all residents was not true. This response was directly contradictory to another survey completed in 1944-1945 by Mildred Blattner for a Virginia State Library report, in which she acknowledges that service to Black residents was only available at a designated branch, not in the main library. Additionally, an undated constitution from the Cherrydale Library Association, a section was amended to change its wording on membership from “Any white person living in the county who pays the annual dues may qualify as a member” to “Any person living in the county can become as a [sic] member.” This change may have reflected the 1950 County desegregation policy, and signals that the library had clearly not always served all residents.

Cherrydale Library Association and Bylaws, no date. From RG 29.

An Unclear Reality of Desegregation

It is also unclear the degree to which desegregation became publicized, or how Black residents came to use the integrated facilities. No local newspapers reported the desegregation, and though the 1963 survey reported that it was generally known that Black residents could access the main library, there is no quantitative evidence of this.

In a 1986 interview with local civil rights activist Dorothy Hamm, who came to Arlington in 1950, she suggested that at this time the libraries were still unavailable to Black residents, either by law or by the de facto practices of segregation.

Narrator: Dorothy M. Hamm

Interviewer: Edmund Campbell and Cas Cocklin

Date: February 21, 1986

Edmund Campbell: Dorothy, let's look at the conditions you found in Arlington in 1950 as far as the relationship between the races is concerned. Were there legal restrictions that were repugnant to members of the Black race at that time?

Dorothy Hamm: Yes, there were. At that time, the schools were segregated. The libraries did not permit Blacks.

EC: You mean you could not come in and get a book in the library?

DH: No, we did not, the children could not. In fact, we could not.

EC: You're speaking of the public library?

DH: As far as I can recall, the Arlington County Libraries were. The children obtained their information from the school libraries.

EC: Was there any way adult Blacks could obtain books from the library?

DH: I do not believe it was [possible] after so many years I cannot really say.

Continued Inequality Across the County

Even once the libraries had been reported as desegregated, rampant inequalities across the County made access to resources still more difficult for Black residents. In a 1959 speech delivered by an unknown speaker to the local Community Council for Social Progress, it notes that:

“[Black Arlingtonian] children have attended Arl[ington’s] separate and unequal colored schools. Near them is a meagerly equipped playground too small for a ball diamond. They are excluded from nearby white parks and playgrounds where there are ball fields and tennis courts. No Arlington movie will admit them and no Arl[ington] restaurant will serve them. They may use the Arl[ington] public libraries on an unsegregated basis. As the result of an NAACP suit segregation on busses serving Arl[ington] ended about ten years ago.”

So while Arlington’s libraries were eventually open to Black residents, it was in a larger context of a deeply segregated system in which the white majority of the County sought to prevent Black people from accessing resources. As referenced in the above speech, Arlington's public school system did not desegregate until 1959, following an extended legal and bureaucratic battle. The County's parks and recreation system did not desegregate until 1962, when the Negro Recreation Section, which had been designated for Black residents, was absorbed into the main County department.

No records have been found reflecting circulation statistics of Black residents in the integrated system, or how new patrons used the facilities. None of the affiliated librarians or volunteers at the Holmes Branch were later listed as being hired by or on the staff of the main County branches.

Conclusion

While the story of Arlington’s library desegregation is at times murky, the story of the resilience and dedication of the Holmes Library Association is undeniable. Faced with a persistent and systemic denial of resources, this group created a haven for books, learning, and discussion for members of their community at a time when the County would not do so.

This article is based on primary source documents found in the Community Archives at the Center for Local History. Documents regarding the Holmes Library can be found in Record Group 29.

This article was also heavily influenced by research conducted by Fairfax County Public Libraries regarding the desegregation of libraries across Northern Virginia. For a more in-depth look at how other library systems desegregated in Northern Virginia, see this report prepared by Fairfax County Public Libraries – Unequal Access: The Desegregation of Public Libraries in Virginia. FCPL also created a detailed video presentation on the topic, which is available on YouTube: Unequal Access: The Desegregation of Public Libraries in Virginia.

This article was authored by Camryn Bell, who is part of the County's management intern training program and has assisted in the collections of the Center for Local History since 2019. 

We hope this article adds to the conversation about segregation in its many forms, and about the history of race in Arlington County more broadly.

And we want to know: How does this story relate to your story? Do you have memories about the Holmes Library, or about segregation in Arlington's library system? Use the form below to send a message to the Center for Local History.

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Oral History: Rayfield Barber

A Lifetime at the Center of Arlington's Airport History

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

Rayfield Barber (1914-2011) was one of the few witnesses to the full trajectory of Arlington’s airport history over the course of his life, and was key to the success of the County's regional airfields.

Among one of the first airport employees in the burgeoning field of commercial flying, he had a distinguished career at both Washington-Hoover Airport and the National Airport.

Barber was born in 1914 in North Carolina, and came to live in Alexandria around 1920. Barber attended the Parker-Gray School, which at the time was Alexandria’s only primary school for Black children.

Rayfield Barber at National Airport, circa 1990s.

In 1932, Barber began working for the West Brothers Brick company, an Arlington-based operation that used materials from the clay deposits on the Potomac to create its product. Barber worked as a machine operator at the factory until 1937. 

Panoramic of the West Brothers brickyard, circa 1903.
Read and listen to Rayfield Barber speaking about his time working at the West Brothers Brick Company in our blog post for April 2021.

When Barber was still working at the brick factory, the Hoover Airport was in its nescient stages. The airfield opened in 1926, and merged with the adjacent Washington Airport in 1933. It was known as one of the most dangerous airfields in the country at this point, in part due to Military Road – a large thoroughfare that brought car traffic between the two airfields.
Barber began working at the airfield in the summer of 1939. In this excerpt from his oral history interview, he describes the early scenes of the airport.

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

Edmund Campbell: Tell us something about the Hoover Airport, what it looked like and what were the conditions? 

Rayfield Barber: It had a hangar that was right on No. 1 Highway. You know, just right off Number 1 Highway. The terminal was setting, say, a little to the northwest of the hangar.    

Cas Cocklin: Sort of where that marina is now?  

RB: Yes, that's where it was.  Right back of the hangar was where the airplanes coming in would come down on the runway.    

EC: Only one runway, wasn't it?  

RB: That's all.  

Aerial photograph of Washington Airport, Hoover Field, and the Arlington Beach and Amusement Park on the Potomac River, circa 1920s.

EC: And where did that runway go from?  

RB: It ran right on down close to the experimental farm. You see the roadway would come up by the restaurant and food.   

EC: The roadway ran right through the runway, right across the runway, didn't it?

A passenger plane flying low over several cars at Hoover Field, circa 1930s.

RB: That road would run right across the runway and they had those lights set up.   

CC: Stoplights.  

RB: Stoplights.

CC: To stop the traffic if a plane was landing or taking off.  

RB: That's right. See, because that road was coming right along from, coming away from Arlington Cemetery . . .  

CC: Going toward Route One. 

Listen to this audio from Barber's interview:

Several cars and a bus driving on Military Road with a sign that says "Road Very Dangerous, Travel at your own risk," circa 1930s.

Several cars driving down a road with a sign that says "Military road, very poor conditions, drive at your own risk," circa 1930s.

Porters at the airfield were initially called “Redcaps” due to the red hats they were required to wear as part of their uniforms. Later they were known more generally as “skycaps," most notably at the National Airport. Initially, Barber was initially paid only in tips, ranging from 10 cents to a dollar, depending on the customer.

“ ’Skycaps’ at the entrance to the administration building. Municipal airport, Washington, D.C,” circa 1941. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Simultaneously, Barber also worked as a taxi driver. He was one of the first Black operators of a taxicab service in Northern Virginia, which he ran through the early 1940s before the start of WWII. When the United States entered the war, it became too difficult to obtain equipment such as tires due to the war production effort.

During this time, Black people in Arlington had to travel to Washington, D.C., to receive medical care, as Virginia hospitals were segregated and had limited resources for Black patients, and expectant mothers were often barred from the maternity ward in full. The Friendly Cab Company was another local service that addressed this issue, providing ride services to Black customers beginning in 1947.

At the Washington-Hoover Airport, Barber met notable figures such as Horace Dodge, Clark Gable, Wallace Berry, the Roosevelts, and the Kennedy family. At the time, Washington Hoover was the only major airport in the area, so it was a thoroughfare for notable individuals.

Flying was also still a new form of transportation and was no exception to the Jim Crow laws that affected every level of life for Black Americans. This made commercial flying largely exclusive to wealthy, white customers.

Reproduction image of a National Archives print that reads: "A full view of the four-motored Douglas C-54 skymaster dubbed the 'Flying White House', an ATC transport specially built for President Roosevelt." From RG 13.

In the 1930s and 1940s, airports across the South began to segregate their facilities, either by sanctioned law or racist informal practices. In 1944, during World War II, members of the Tuskegee Airmen integrated the National Airport’s cafeteria after initially being denied service. However, after the war ended, segregation soon re-installed itself in airport facilities. After pressure from President Truman, the airport desegregated its restaurants in 1948, but only the next year, a D.C. resident brought a suit against the Air Terminal Services arguing that she had been denied service on account of her race.

In June 1941, when Hoover closed, Barber moved to the National Airport. On its opening day, Barber was the first on the runway, unloading one of three planes that inaugurated the debut (and American Airlines DC-3). As one of three skycaps working at the time, he earned $1.25 for 10 hours of work each day.

The main building of the Washington Airport, in the early 1930s.

Freshly completed Terminal A of the Washington National Airport, circa late 1930s.

Barber worked at National Airport until the early 1990s, accruing more than 50 years of airport experience. Barber’s interview describes many fascinating aspects of his life, such as fortuitously being home from work the day of the 14th Street Bridge crash, to meeting every first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt over the course of his career. In this selection, Barber sums up his work at the airport: 

EC: As soon as Hoover Airport was closed, you moved over to National, did you?  

RB: That's right.  

EC: And acted as a porter there? 

RB: That's right.  

EC: And you still are a porter at National? 

RB: I'm still there.  I'm considering retiring. 

EC: But you haven't retired yet? 

RB: I haven't retired yet. 

EC: So, you have been a porter either at Hoover Airport or at National Airport or both for how long? 

RB: About fifty‑two years.  Fifty‑two years.  I had been at National fifty years.  I went to National June 16th, 1941.   

EC: They had a special ceremony, didn't they, last month for you?   

RB: Yeah, they had a special ceremony at Crystal City Marriott Hotel and a real special one was over at Crystal City building they sometime call No. 3, that's when Mr. Robb was there, and former governor Holton of Virginia. 

Listen to this audio from Barber's interview:

Additional photos of Rayfield Barber at Washington National Airport, circa 1990s. Photos by former County photographer Deborah Ernst.

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, make an appointment to visit the Center for Local History located at Central Library.

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

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

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