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local history news

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

Post Published: August 7, 2015

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

August 7, 2015 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Tagged With: local history news

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

Post Published: August 4, 2015

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.

From the Hall’s Hill murals by Roderick Turner, located adjacent to Langston-Brown Community Center.
Remember Station 8, Paulette Washington
Rare Vintage Station No. 8 Turnout Gear

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.

 

August 4, 2015 by Web Editor Filed Under: Center for Local History, News Tagged With: local history news

Civil War Artifacts from the Arlington Historical Society

Post Published: July 17, 2015

Our History on Display

On Exhibit at the Aurora Hills Branch Library, July – August 2015

Like most museums, the Arlington Historical Museum (located in the Hume School) has more artifacts than can be displayed at any one time.

So the Arlington Historical Society recently launched an effort to locate display areas in public spaces around the County in order to bring the history of Arlington to more people.

Arlington Historical Society exhibit at AH

The Aurora Hills Branch Library’s exhibit includes maps, photos and artifacts from the ring of Civil War forts – most of which would have been within firing distance of this library: 

 

The Historical Society currently has two other exhibits in the community:

  • The Center for Local History at Central Library – Artifacts from the Ball-Sellers House, the oldest building in the county, a farm house built around 1750.
  • Arlington Village Community Center – Toys and pictures reflecting the childhood memories of the early residents, in honor of the 75th anniversary of the apartments.

 

July 17, 2015 by Web Editor Filed Under: Art News, News Tagged With: art news, local history news

Display at Central, June 27 Program Honor an Arlington Hero

Post Published: June 12, 2015

A tribute to Arlington’s own Freedom Rider and fearless civil rights activist

A photo-rich traveling display on the life of Joan Mulholland–from demonstrations against segregated ArlingtoMulholland displayn restaurants to her work with Medgar Evers and imprisonment in Mississippi–is featured this month on the Central Library first floor near the Circulation Desk.

A program at Central on June 27 at 2 p.m. will include a screening of the documentary “An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Mulholland,” remarks by Joan, her son, filmmaker Loki Mulholland, and Delegate Patrick Hope. [program flyer pdf]

To learn more about Joan, watch an award-winning video from Arlington TV on the Library’s Center for Local History and its efforts to preserve the remarkable life stories of Arlington residents past and present.

 

 

June 12, 2015 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Tagged With: local history news

In the News: The Washington Post Explores Our Center for Local History

Post Published: June 1, 2015

Judy Knudsen, manager of the Center for Local History at the Arlington’s Central Library, looks through a drawer of train and trolley route maps. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)

In the May 30, 2015 Washington Post article “Interested in Arlington History? This is the Place for You,” columnist John Kelly revels in the Arlington past as he meets the staff and sees the unique resources of Arlington Public Library’s Center for Local History.

 

 

June 1, 2015 by Web Editor Filed Under: Arlington Public Library in the News, News Tagged With: local history news

See You at the Fair!

Post Published: August 7, 2014

Stop By and Say “Hello” at an Arlington Summer Tradition

The fun of August is back at the Thomas Jefferson Community Center with the 38th Annual Arlington County Fair.

ferris

Make your way to the outdoor Kid’s Court from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 9 and Sunday, Aug. 10 for games and a prize wheel, weather-permitting, all brought to you by our fair-tastic Arlington Public Library staff.

Indoors at T.J., be sure to check out a series of “throughout-the-years” displays from the Library’s Center for Local History, featuring rare archive images of Arlington at work and play.

The Arlington County Fair: a grand time for the entire family–with an optional side of deep-fried cheese curds! 

Hope to see you there.

August 7, 2014 by Web Editor Filed Under: News Tagged With: local history news

Our Back Pages: Arlington’s Own Declaration of Civil Rights

Post Published: July 2, 2014

In observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we look back at a document from a few years earlier, for a glimpse of a still-segregated Arlington…

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law as various Civil Rights leaders look on, including the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Photo courtesy of the LBJ Library, photo by Cecil Stoughton .

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the signing into law of the Civil Rights Act of 1964– one of the most important pieces of Civil Rights legislation of the twentieth century. The Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Likewise, the Act outlawed racial segregation in public accommodations, and ended unequal application of voter registration requirements.

In observance of this landmark piece of legislation, we would like to share a transcription of “The Negro Citizen in Arlington,” a leaflet that was published by the Arlington Council on Human Relations, a multi-racial, multi-faith organization that advocated for Civil Rights for all Arlingtonians. 

Published just a little over a year after Arlington became the first school district in Virginia to desegregate, this document is a powerful reminder that despite those four students integrating Stratford Junior High in 1959, segregation in Arlington was still far from over. Many institutions in Arlington remained segregated, and this document specifically enumerates some of them: from sit-down restaurants and movie theaters, to maternity wards, to playgrounds and pony rides for children.

Item six contains one of the leaflet’s most powerful observations: “It is the uncertainty about so many aspects of his life that is trying for a Negro in Arlington. Some years ago he knew exactly what his limitations were. He didn’t like being limited but he knew what to expect. Now he is tired of being unknowing about his status.” In the years leading up to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, this was indeed the reality for many Blacks in the South.

This document powerfully evokes a time of both hope and deep uncertainty in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, when they had begun to affect positive outcomes on a local level, but those advances were tempered by lingering segregation, inconsistent statutes and enforcement, and the long historical shadow of Jim Crow.


THE NEGRO CITIZEN IN ARLINGTON

A Negro in Arlington, Virginia can, like any of the white residents of our community, call an efficient Fire Department if his house is burning. He can send his child to school and know that an alert officer will stop traffic if need be so that his son or daughter may make a safe street crossing. His wife can buy meat at the nearest super-market with the assurance that it has been inspected and is fairly weighed and priced. In most matters the Arlington Negro lives out his days with the same elements of risk and with the same measure of civic protection threatening him on the one hand and supporting him on the other as is the common lot of the rest of us in modern situations. But there are areas of his life where being a Negro makes a difference in his days. Believing that many people may be unaware of this difference, the Arlington County Council on Human Relations would bring the following facts to the attention of concerned people.

1.   If an Arlington Negro man wants to take his family out to dinner, he will have to go to the District of Columbia to find a restaurant of high quality where they may be seated. They would be turned away from all the better eating places in Arlington. If his family is in the mood for an informal meal, he may buy food to carry home at an Arlington Drive-in Restaurant but he cannot expect the kind of curb service which many white families enjoy at the end of a busy day. It is not clear to what extent restaurant restrictions are related to the legal ban on mixed seating in public and to what extent they are related to the prejudices of white patrons.

2.  If an Arlington Negro wants to see a movie, he must also go to Washington. He cannot walk to a neighborhood movie or go to any Drive-in Theatre in the Arlington area because they are all closed to Negroes. Nor can he go to a public bowling alley or skating rink. He cannot stop for his children to have pony rides at a pony lot.

3.  Highly qualified personnel direct the Arlington recreation program for Negroes but whereas the playgrounds and summer recreation programs for white children are located in the neighborhoods where white children live, only two small playgrounds are available for Negroes. Both of them are inadequate and the largest one, where full-scale ball games might be played, is in the southern tip of Arlington, inaccessible to the large number of Negro youth in North Arlington. Negro children live very near some of the large playing fields designated for white children. They can only watch from the sidelines. If friendly youngsters call out to them to join the games, they must ignore the invitation or accept it with the risk that they might be sent away, or, failing to leave, might be taken to the police station.

4.  A Negro man may rush his child to Arlington Hospital for emergency treatment or for hospitalization in the non-segregated pediatrics ward and he may go himself as an out-patient or as a bed patient in the Negro ward. But when his wife is ready to give birth to their baby, he cannot take her to the community hospital where white babies are born. He must take her miles away to a hospital in the District or in Alexandria. Perchance her baby can’t wait for the Washington hospital, the Negro mother will be attended as an emergency case in the Arlington Hospital but she cannot then be placed in the maternity ward. She will be put in the general ward for Negroes where she might be exposed to any one of a variety of infectious diseases. The general ward for Negroes actually becomes a receiving ward for all overflow patients because though a Negro may not be placed in sections of the hospital designated for whites, if the white sections are full, the white patients needing space are placed in the Negro ward. This ward is not as carefully controlled for visitors as the maternity ward is, making it the more unsuitable for post-delivery cases.

5.  Many Negroes in Arlington own their homes and home ownership is a thing of special pride to them. Many of Arlington’s Negro citizens are native residents of the county and live on property which was owned by their parents or grandparents. But when young Negroes marry, even though they are well educated and have good jobs, they cannot find, in Arlington, homes which they may buy or land where Negroes may build. There is little rental property available to them. So they must leave neighborhoods where they have friends, must leave churches where they have roots and responsibilities, and whether they like it or not, must live in Washington. Older Negroes sit precariously on their front porches in Arlington because they feel that expansion of public building in the past has been at the expense of Negro land and they ponder when some new expansion will take their property and leave them homeless.

6.  It is the uncertainty about so many aspects of his life that is trying for a Negro in Arlington. Some years ago he knew exactly what his limitations were. He didn’t like being limited but he knew what to expect. Now he is tired of being unknowing about his status.

The Negro knows that merit hiring permits him to apply for and, if he is qualified, to receive a Civil Service job in the Arlington community. He does not know to what extent racial prejudice may influence the decisions of the department head who is responsible for his promotions.

The Negro knows that by Federal Law his children are now guaranteed public school education on a non-segregated basis. He does not know how long it will be before Negroes in Arlington can expect that without individual court appeals, their children will all be accepted in neighborhood schools just as other children are.

These certain limitations and uncertain opportunities which daily confront Negro citizens in Arlington are felt by those who participated in the survey, to be a blight upon the county and a burden upon all of its residents. How change and improvement may best be brought about will be a matter of continuing concern to those persons of several races and of various faiths who compose the membership of the Arlington Council on Human Relations.

July 2, 2014 by Web Editor Filed Under: News, Our Back Pages, Unboxed Tagged With: local history news

Library Digitizing Historic Sun Newspapers; Some Issues Unavailable During Process

Post Published: June 4, 2014

Library’s Center for Local History is creating a unique, searchable index of 20th century area news

Arlington Public Library’s microfilm collection of the Northern Virginia Sun–originally the Arlington Sun–is being converted to a digital, full-text database–a boon for researchers, history buffs and anyone searching for specific moments in Arlington’s 20th century story.

IMG_0023

The collection from 1935 through September 1978 will be unavailable at times as the work is completed off-site.

Until now, historic issues of the Sun had no formal index, making the search for specific stories almost impossible without knowing a publication date. The Sun was published as a thick broadsheet Monday through Saturday for much of its existence.

The digitized versions of the Sun will be available on public workstations in the Center for Local History at Central Library. The digitization was made possible by the Friends of Arlington Public Library.

The Northern Virginia Sun ceased publication in 1998 but much of its identity was transferred to the Arlington Sun Gazette, which remains a weekly published by Northern Virginia Media Services.

Arlington Public Library also offers digital online issues of the Alexandria Daily Gazette dating back to 1808–more than a century before Arlington was established as a separate county. Among the thousands of other newspapers available in the Library’s collection are historic digital issues of the Washington Evening Star and Washington Post.

 

 

June 4, 2014 by Web Editor Filed Under: Collection, News Tagged With: local history news

In the News: Preserving Arlington Stories

Post Published: February 18, 2014

Years from now, new generations will be grateful for today’s Center for Local History at Arlington Public Library

Arlington Television captures the long-term value of an official County archive as it helps preserve the story of Joan Mulholland, the fearless civil rights activist who fought segregation from Lee Highway to the Deep South before raising a family and teaching for decades back home in Arlington. This video won the 2014 Best of Show Award from the Library Leadership & Management Association.

An extensive oral history with Mulholland, available from the Center, represents just one “Arlington story” in a vast collection of memories and artifacts.

As a “footnote” to those stories and the piece above, Center manager Judith Knudsen received the 2014 lifetime achievement award from the Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region organization.

Judy and the Center’s work speak for themselves. And because of that, so do so many voices of Arlington’s past.

 

Learn more about the Center for Local History at the Arlington Public Library.

 

February 18, 2014 by Web Editor Filed Under: Arlington Public Library in the News, Center for Local History, News Tagged With: local history news

In the News: Falls Church News-Press Hails Center for Local History

Post Published: November 18, 2013

Arlington Columnist Finds Much to Like in History Collection

localhistory3From Nov. 13, 2013

The Falls Church New-Press “Our Man in Arlington” columnist Charlie Clark gives praise to Library’s local history operation.

 

 

 

 

 

November 18, 2013 by Web Editor Filed Under: Arlington Public Library in the News, Collection, News Tagged With: Central Renovations 2013, local history news

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