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Exploring the Story of Desegregation in Arlington Public Schools

"Project DAPS"

The richly documented story of public school desegregation in Virginia will be made accessible online by the County that led the way.

On Saturday, Feb. 25, in conjunction with the 2017 Feel the Heritage Festival, Arlington Public Library launches Projectdaps.org, a unique online exhibition and searchable database – built from thousands of photos, documents and recordings – surrounding the legal and moral battles that culminated with four courageous African American students taking their seats on Feb. 2, 1959 at Arlington’s Stratford Junior High School.

black and white photograph of black students entering Stratford Junior High in 1959

Ronald Deskins, Michael Jones, Lance Newman, and Gloria Thompson walked into Stratford Junior High School on February 2, 1959. Center for Local History, Arlington Public Library

 

“Project DAPS” (Desegregation of Arlington Public Schools) is culled from the holdings of the Library’s Community Archives in the Center for Local History (CLH) at Central Library.

The project explores the historic narrative starting with early integration efforts amid Arlington’s rapid growth of the 1940s. Many items were recently digitized for the first time.

In 2016, the Stratford school property was declared a local historic district. Library Director Diane Kresh says the timing was perfect for creating a “complementary and comprehensive digital collection to tell the story of this signal milestone in our rich community history.”

Because there are always more layers of history to find and examine, the CLH continually seeks community donations and oral histories, particularly as they relate to desegregation following the historic day at Stratford. To contribute, contact the CLH at 703-228-5966 or localhistory@arlingtonva.us.

This digital access project was completed using new FY2017 funding in the Department of Libraries budget dedicated to increasing public access to government records and archival materials.

The Center for Local History at Arlington Public Library is committed to collecting, preserving, and sharing the history of Arlington County. 

 

Public Shoe Store Donates Records to Center for Local History

Farewell to an Arlington Landmark, 1938-2016

The Public Shoe Store in Clarendon, one of the oldest long-term businesses in Arlington, closed its doors on February 27.

S. H. “Doc” Friedman, the store’s owner and a podiatrist by training, has finally decided to retire after 78 years in the business [Arlnow.com]. Specializing in comfort shoes and custom fitting, it is one of the rare specialty stores of its kind left in the area and will certainly be missed by its many long-time customers.

“Doc” Friedman is donating the records of the Public Shoe Store, as well as the sign from the front of the store, to the Center for Local History at the Arlington Public Library.

In doing so, he is making sure that the Public Shoe Store’s place in the history of the community is preserved.

Letter to 'Doc" Friedman from a loyal customer (click to enlarge)

Did you know that the Center for Local History collects historical business records as well as the records of Arlington organizations?

These records help tell the story of the development of the community and provide unique testimony to the achievements of your business or organization. Placing these records in an archival repository helps assure that they will be preserved and become part of the community’s collective memory.

If you have business or organizational records you would like to donate, please contact the Center for Local History at 703-228-5966, or email localhistory@arlingtonva.us.

 

Celebrate Black History: Hall’s Hill +150

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the notable Hall’s Hill/High View Park neighborhood in north Arlington.

Bazil Hall home behind trees

Bazil Hall home, 1700 N. George Mason Dr., c. 1866

The name Hall’s Hill comes from Bazil Hall, an Alexandria (now Arlington) County farm owner in antebellum Northern Virginia.  Following the difficult Civil War years, Hall gradually broke up and sold his estate, including its noted rise, in small parcels to freed slaves, generally for $10-15 per acre.

Hall, according to a 1969 interview with Robert Nickerson, urged blacks to buy as much land as they could, saying a time would come when they would no longer be allowed to acquire such property. In Nickerson’s words: “[H]e told the truth.”  In the 1890s, before enforced segregation kicked in, the lots were also advertised in the Washington Bee, the region’s black newspaper.

In the early days of the Hall’s Hill community, most residents had gardens and often raised chickens and hogs. In oral histories, they fondly described a life built around church, community and social activities. Block parties, sledding and the neighborhood baseball team, known as the Virginia White Sox, were just some of the pastimes.

“The Hill” is remembered as a place where you knew everyone and everyone knew you, and children understood that if they misbehaved in front of neighbors, their parents would soon hear of it.  A close-knit community, the people of Hall’s Hill looked out for one another.

Mount Salvation Baptist Church

Mount Salvation Baptist Church

Bounded by Lee Highway (north), Glebe Road (east), North 17th Street (south) and George Mason Drive (west),  residents established many of their own stores, schools and houses of worship.  The churches in particular remain an ongoing source for social, cultural and religious enrichment.

Until the 1950s the neighborhood was separated from the adjacent white community by an 8-foot-high fence that ran between the backyards of blacks and whites.  Only a small part of the fence remains today. It can be seen from N. 17th Street.

Members of the community played  significant roles in the national and local Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, working to desegregate public schools, housing, theaters, hospitals, libraries and eating facilities.

Calloway Methodist Church

Calloway Methodist Church

Arlington County officially changed the neighborhood’s name to High View Park in 1965. However, many long-time residents still prefer to call the area by its original name.

Today an aging population and changing demographics place the community on the brink of significant change, but as long as the stories of residents are collected, preserved, and celebrated, its history and significant contributions will be not be lost.

From an oral history with Welbe “Peggy” Earline Deskins done in 2003:

“I think it’s always important to… remember your roots and to remember where you started from… the why and how of everything.  I think that helps in your later life and it certainly helps other people as they’re coming along.

If you lose it all, [there] comes the time when there’s a whole race who just knows nothing…. You might have to even start out from the beginning, but when you do, if you have some references, then you know what to start with.

I think you should always… keep track of history… people were different in that time.  People helped each other a lot more.  People were a lot more open with each other, you know.  I mean you could run next door and get a cup of sugar you know…  it was just different.  And those are the kinds of things I think that help people to keep going and to prosper.”

Remembering Arlington History Preservationist Sara Collins

Delegate Alfonso Lopez joined Library Director Diane Kresh on Nov. 20 to honor former County history preservationist Sara Collins.

Sara Collins Resolution

Collins died last year after a remarkable career with the Library and what is now the Center for Local History at Central.

Her work was remembered this year with a resolution in the General Assembly.

Delegate Lopez made his presentation at the final meeting of the County’s History Task Force.

The group of County staff and residents is working on a 5-year plan for the future preservation and study of Arlington historic documents and records, both official and those generated by private citizens, businesses and organizations.

A final task force report will be presented to the County Board next month.

9/11: What Children Felt

Note: We shared the basic contents of this post last year at this time. The reader response was so strong that we present it again. And we never forget.

Fourteen years ago, young people from across the United States shared their gratitude, fear, patriotism and sorrow with the police and firefighters of Arlington Virginia.

a child's drawing of two tall buildings, the American flag and the Pentagon.Their unsolicited drawings and letters–preserved in the collections of Arlington Public Library’s Center for Local History–now show inevitable signs of age. Some of the young artists and writers no doubt have children of their own.

Sept. 11 letter

But the emotions of those grade schoolers and teens remain as fresh and powerful as the day they were put on paper and mailed from places like Renton, Wash., Toledo, Ohio, Clarksdale, Miss. and more locally Ashburn and the District.

The messages were welcomed and then saved. To preserve is to remember.

There are many ways to learn more and take part in the commemoration of Sept. 11, 2001 in Arlington:

 

Remembering Arlington’s Freedman’s Village

A new bridge to Arlington’s past

drawing of Freedmans Village BridgeOn Sept. 10, 2015, Arlington officials will formally dedicate “Freedmans Village Bridge,” the replacement overpass for Washington Boulevard at Columbia Pike.

The naming honor for the 19th century Arlington community of former slaves was approved by the state after a 2008 request from the County Board. Washington Boulevard is officially a state route.

freedmans village

The new bridge incorporates medallion images of the village, which was established as a model community by federal military officials on the captured property of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Custis-Lee estate in 1863. The village, which included housing, schools, a hospital and vocational facilities, was intended to be a temporary stopping point for the former slaves to establish themselves before moving on. Yet the community lasted and even thrived until 1900 when, after decades of trying, the government closed the village, persuading residents to accept payment to leave. Many found homes in other Arlington neighborhoods such as Hall’s Hill and Nauck.

Arlington TV spoke with Dr. Talmadge Williams in 2009 to explore the history and legacy of Freedman’s Village. Williams, an Arlington historian, educator and civil rights leader, died last year.

Although “Freedman’s Village” is now commonly spelled with the apostrophe, County preservation staff recommended that the bridge name not include the punctuation as a more accurate rendition of the name from when the community existed.

More than 28,000 residents of Freedman’s Village are buried in Section 27 of Arlington National Cemetery.

 

Seeking Public’s Ideas on Collecting, Preserving, Sharing our History

What about Arlington’s history is important to you? Where do you go to learn about our history as a community? How do you think our history should be collected, preserved and shared?

Arlington County is asking the public to help it with an initiative launched by the County Manager in January 2015. The Arlington Historical Task Force is a group of residents who have been examining how we currently collect and manage historical records and examining best practices of communities across the nation to help us establish priorities moving forward.

Please take this short, on-line survey – your opinion matters!  http://www.peakdemocracy.com/2916

Legacy: Hall’s Hill VFD and Station No. 8

A Timeline of the Rich History of the Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department

For decades during segregation, Fire Station #8 was the only Arlington, Va. station staffed by African Americans.

Tap or click on images to view larger versions.

 

African American men in white shirts and dark ties

Halls Hill Volunteer Fire Department, taken on the grounds of the John M. Langston Elementary School, probably 1930s

1898

First firefighting company in future Arlington County formed in Cherrydale by volunteers.

Other volunteer firefighting companies to follow will include Ballston in 1908 and Clarendon in 1909.

1918

Group of volunteer firefighters forms in the Hall’s Hill area, an African American neighborhood that began as home to many freed slaves and was kept separate from adjacent white communities in part by an 8-foot wooden fence.

The Hall’s Hill firefighters acquire a 60-gallon chemical tank, which has to be pulled by six men over unpaved, often muddy roads. At some point, company equipment is housed on the grounds of the John Langston Elementary School, 2121 N. Culpeper St.

1920

Arlington County is formally established by the Virginia General Assembly from the previously named “Alexandria County.”

Hall's Hill Volunteer Fire Station

East Arlington Volunteer Fire Company 

1925

Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department (HHVFD) elects its first officers and trustees.

Another African-American volunteer firefighter company is formed, the East Arlington VFD, later to be disbanded by the County Board in February 1941 as the “Hell’s Bottom” area of Arlington is prepared for construction of the Pentagon.

1926

HHVFD buys its first motor-driven engine, a 1917 Mitchell, with funds raised through door-to-door canvassing and pledged donations. The 60-gallon tank is mounted on the Mitchell.

1927

HHVFD is officially incorporated. The company buys a one-ton Chevrolet chassis, which is mounted with two 60-gallon tanks.

HHVFD moves to a lot on Lee Highway and a telephone is installed in the firehouse. Each residence in the community receives a card asking for a donation of 25 cents each month to support the fire company. Fire calls are routed by the chief operator of the local phone company.

African American man driving an old firetruck draped in bunting

Hall’s Hill Volunteer Firetruck, probably 1930s, apparently marking a national celebration. 

1932 

Arlington government begins paying for equipment and the utility bills for volunteer fire companies in the County and provides HHVFD with its first pumper.

1933 

HHVFD company acquires a 1929 Diamond-T truck.

1934 

The HHVFD relocates to a lot at 2209 North Culpeper St. near Lee Highway and a new firehouse is built. The land is owned by the Hicks family, which runs several businesses including the Hicks Store and Restaurant just west.

Hall's Hill Volunteer Fire Station

Halls Hill Station 8, 2 trucks

The firehouse develops as a de facto community center, providing a constant source for local news and conversation and eventually offering the convenience of a pay telephone and a soda machine. The volunteers would eventually add recreation and sleeping quarters in the 1950s to accommodate expanded shifts and more firefighters.

To indicate a fire call, volunteers are summoned to the station by a blaring siren mounted on the roof under a simple square belfry.

1935 

A blanket organization of Arlington fire companies—the Arlington County Fireman’s Association– is formed but without the Hall’s Hill and East Arlington men.

1937 

The Arlington County Fire Marshall becomes the Chief of the Fire and Safety Division and goes on the official government payroll as the first firefighting professional.

1940 

Hall's Hill Volunteer Fire Station

Fire Station 8, 2209 Culpeper St

The County begins negotiating a pay rate for a professional fire staff—to work within the volunteer companies primarily as drivers–in July. Hall’s Hill will be last among the firefighting companies assigned paid professionals with three men added in January 1951.

As a unified County Fire Department comes together, Arlington government formally begins paying rent to the volunteer companies, including Hall’s Hill, for the use of their firehouses.

Jimmie Taylor, born in 1936 and a Hall’s Hill resident from childhood, remembers the HHVFD having an unofficial mascot, a large German Shepard named Brownie, who seemed to have no specific owners but would often hang around the firehouse and even follow crews on calls. Brownie’s role was later taken, on a somewhat more official basis, by a Dalmatian named Miss Weeks, who had puppies each named for a day of the week.

Taylor recalls HHVFD volunteers sometimes pushing an aging firetruck onto Lee Highway to get its engine started as the vehicle rolled down the hill. Rochester Weeden was frequently behind the wheel. Weeden was known throughout the neighborhood as “Maybe-so,” the result of what Taylor says was Weeden’s ready response to almost any question and also his philosophy toward the balky truck.

 

Hall's Hill Volunteer Fire Department

Rear view of Hall’s Hill Fire Station No. 8, 2209 North Culpeper 

1941

The County Board agrees to pay six of Arlington’s seven volunteer fire departments a monthly rate of $455 for designated professional firefighters. The HHVFD is excluded.

Equipment from the now-disbanded East Arlington VFD is transferred to the HHVFC.

The HHVFD company’s Diamond-T is replaced with a 1935 GMC truck.

1944 

The Hicks family deeds the 2209 North Culpeper lot to the “Trustees of the Arlington County Fire Department Engine No. 8.”

1950-1951 

The company’s 1935 GMC truck is replaced by a 600-gallon pumper built in 1929. Two-way radios are also added.

Typed list of volunteer firefighters

1947 list of Volunteer Firefighters at Fire Station 8

1951 

Station No. 8’s first three County-paid firefighters arrive in January to be followed by a fourth later in the year. A fifth is added in 1952, a sixth in 1953 and two more in 1954. All men are African-American. The same will hold true for subsequent hires into the early 1960s.

A popular notion holds that No. 8 is the first officially black-run and -operated fire station south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Original paid firefighters of Station No. 8, in order of hire: Alfred Clark, Julian Syphax, George McNeal, Archie Syphax, Hartman Reed, James K. Jones, Carroll Deskins, Henry Vincent, Carl Cooper, Ervin Richardson, Jimmy Terry, Wilton Hendricks, Bill Warrington and Bobby Hill.

According to Station No. 8 firefighter Hartman Reed, who was hired in 1952, “We were a segregated station and for some reason, the feeling during those years was that they wouldn’t involve us in things that were outside of our jurisdiction too often.” Reed was interviewed for a 2008 Arlington Public Library oral history.

During a huge inferno in Rosslyn on a particularly cold night, almost all County fire crews are called in except those of Station No. 8. That night Reed tells the only other man on duty at Hall’s Hill: “Thank goodness for Jim Crow.”

Hall's Hill Volunteer Fire Department

1929 American LaFrance 600 gallon pumper Acquired by HHVFD in 1953

Reed recalls a house fire at which the owner would not let Station No. 8 crews take their positions. Other stations had to be summoned. He describes the episode as somewhat rare but says that when Station No. 8 responded to calls beyond Hall’s Hill, he and colleagues would often hear insults including one barrage from a drunk man being treated for a broken ankle. “We were trying to help him but it didn’t make no difference,” Reed remembered with a laugh in 2008.

 

 

1957  

Alfred Clark becomes the first African American fire captain in the County, continuing to serve at Station No. 8. His daughter Kitty remembers that when the station later became integrated in the 1960s, some white firefighters said they “would not serve under a ‘Ni…’ and even wrote it on the chalkboard. The battalion chief came up, ordered it removed, and told the white firefighters they will serve and respect Captain Clark.”

black and white photo of Halls Hill volunteer Fire Department

Halls Hill Pumper

1959

In an attempt to prevent the integration of Arlington’s Stratford Junior High School, Rep. Joel T. Broyhill (R-Va.) visits the home of Carrol Deskins to imply that the Station No. 8 firefighter could lose his job if his son Ronnie joins other African American students in enrolling at the school. Deskins tells Broyhill to leave. Ronnie Deskins and three other students make Stratford Virginia’s first integrated public school on Feb. 2. Carrol Deskins remained a firefighter.

 

1960

The Arlington Council on Human Relations issues a leaflet condemning the “limitations and uncertain opportunities which daily confront Negro citizens in Arlington” as “a blight on the  county and a burden upon all of its residents.” In June, civil rights activists launch a series of lunch counter sit-ins at Arlington drug stores and eateries, including some within blocks of Hall’s Hill. Corporate ownerships drop segregated seating within days.

Hall's Hills Volunteer Fire Department

Ground breaking for new Fire Station No. 8, 1962. Construction lasted about a year.

1962

Ground is broken for a new Station No. 8 on land immediately east of the 2209 North Culpeper site, where, among other things, a small grocery store and an auto shop had stood. The new firehouse will have the address 4845 Lee Highway. The site is made up of five parcels that will be purchased by the County from 1962 to 1968. The final parcel is deeded by the Hall’s Hill Volunteer Fire Department and the Hicks family.

 

Late 1962-Early 1963

Integration reaches the Arlington County Fire Department including Station No. 8, as it prepares for a new, larger home next door.

1963

The new Station No. 8 at 4845 Lee Highway opens June 17 with two pumpers and a new 100-foot aerial ladder truck. It is staffed with 17 paid firefighters and several volunteers. The first floor contains a dispatch board, offices, sleeping and recreation areas. The basement includes a community room.

Hall's Hill Volunteer Fire Department

New Fire Station No. 8, 1963

Probably 1964

Arlington-based American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell visits Station No. 8 in full storm trooper regalia to speak with firefighters about his plan to pay African Americans to relocate to Africa. Then-Lieutenant Reed remembers the meeting as “amusing” but describes Rockwell as “dead serious.” Rockwell, who had taunted civil rights protesters during Arlington lunch counter sit-ins in 1960, will be shot dead by an associate in the parking lot of the Dominion Hills Shopping Center on Wilson Boulevard in August 1967.

1968

While other Arlington fire stations are dispatched into the District when riots break out following the April 4 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Station No. 8 is not asked to participate. Reed says he never knew why.

1974

The Arlington County Fire Department makes history with the hiring of Judy Livers (later Brewer), the nation’s first female firefighter. She is assigned to Station No. 4 in Clarendon and goes on to a distinguished career, retiring in 1999 as a battalion chief.

1999

Fire Station 8, 2015

Fire Station 8, 2015

A study for the County Manager identifies Station No. 8, plus three others, for possible “relocation, consolidation, replacement or closure” because it is on a “cramped site” and “poorly situated in relation to the heavy traffic on Lee Highway.” Studies of response times in 2000 and 2012 will reinforce County interest in moving Station No. 8 to a new location in north Arlington.

2016

After community resistance to a move, the Arlington County Board votes to build a new Fire Station No. 8 on the station’s current Lee Highway site.

More images of HHFVD/Station No. 8 on flickr

 

 

Do you have suggested additions or corrections for this timeline? Please use the comments section below.

This timeline was written by Peter Golkin, a former Library staff person. Assistance was provided by Judy and Arthur Branch, Kitty Clark-Stevenson, Capt. Chuck Kramaric, Jimmie Taylor, Hartman Reed and the Arlington VA Virtual Fire Museum.

Read more articles on Arlington’s history on the Center for Local History Blog.

For more information regarding the materials and collections available for research, please contact the Center for Local History at 703-228-5966.

 



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