New Report Links NoVA's Current Black-White Disparities To Region’s History

NORTHERN VIRGINIA — Northern Virginia has a deep history of resistance to segregation, although many of the courageous acts in the region were overshadowed by other activists who became national icons, such as Rosa Parks who played a leadership role in the Montgomery bus boycott and James Meredith who fought to become the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.

Acts of civil disobedience in Northern Virginia go back far. In Alexandria, five Black men were arrested in 1939 for reading books in the city's whites-only library. In 1959, four students from Arlington's Hall’s Hill neighborhood stepped into Stratford Junior High School and became the first students to desegregate a public school in Virginia.

Activist Dion Diamond participated in a sit-in at the Cherrydale Drug Fair in Arlington in 1960 where he was confronted by American Nazi Party chief George Lincoln Rockwell and a group of young white men.

Despite the courage of these individuals and the positive difference they made, the Black community in Northern Virginia has paid a terrible price for centuries of systemic racism.

A new report from the Northern Virginia Health Foundation and the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University tells the history of exclusion and segregation in Northern Virginia. The segregated system has caused severe harm to the health of residents of certain Northern Virginia communities and led to concentrated wealth and opportunity for others in other areas of the region, according to the report.

The new report, released Monday, provides a “backstory” to a 2017 VCU study for the Northern Virginia Health Foundation that documented a 17-year gap in life expectancy across Northern Virginia, an area known for its affluence and quality of life. The 2017 study identified 15 “islands of disadvantage,” clusters of census tracts where residents — disproportionately people of color — face living conditions that take years off their lives, such as poverty, low levels of education, lack of affordable housing and inadequate access to health care.

“Deeply Rooted: History’s Lessons for Equity in Northern Virginia” chronicles Black experiences in Northern Virginia over the past 400 years.

The report is based on historical research conducted by the Center on Society and Health in consultation with a 14-member advisory panel and with assistance from local libraries and private collections. The report is accompanied by a new website — HistoryForTomorrow.org —that explores the history in more detail with stories, videos, photos, news clips and maps.

“Deeply Rooted: History’s Lessons for Equity in Northern Virginia” details a history of exclusion from home ownership, education, jobs and civil liberties and offers specific suggestions for current policies that can help redress the lasting impact of the past.

SEE ALSO: Desegregation In Virginia Commemorated At Arlington Middle School

While the report focuses on the effects on the Black population, similar challenges exist for other communities of color in Northern Virginia, for many of the same reasons.

“Northern Virginia is fortunate to be a prosperous region, but that prosperity is not available to all. The residents of Northern Virginia and their leaders need to understand not only the challenges we face but why we face them,” Northern Virginia Health Foundation President Patricia N. Mathews said in a statement Monday. “This report tells the story of how long-standing policies and practices produced the problems we see today and points the way toward solutions for better housing, education, jobs and prosperity for everyone in the region.”

The report describes how the history of policies and decisions acted over time to shape the health and well-being of neighborhoods.

In 1800, more than 40 percent of Prince William County residents were enslaved. Eventually, these people were freed and then established 19th century communities such as Batestown and Joplin, which disappeared in the 1930s when the federal government evicted residents to establish a recreational area that became Prince William Forest Park.

In the 1920s, Black families in the enclave of Tinner Hill were displaced when Lee Highway was routed through Falls Church.

In the 1930s, when federally subsidized mortgages became available, they were approved almost exclusively for white buyers and were routinely denied to Black buyers. By World War II, suburban development, restrictive covenants that barred Black homeowners and discriminatory lending pushed Arlington’s once widely dispersed Black population into three small enclaves.

In 1942, the federal government invoked eminent domain and razed two Black communities, East Arlington and Queen City, to build roads leading to the Pentagon.

In the 1950s and 1960s, suburban development displaced Black families in the Fort Ward and Seminary communities of Alexandria. In Loudoun County, the largely Black village of Willard in was razed to build Washington-Dulles International Airport.

“The disadvantaged neighborhoods we see today did not come about by accident — decades of policies have served to segregate people of color and choke off opportunities for education and wealth-building, making a downhill economic spiral inevitable,” Steven Woolf M.D., director emeritus of the VCU Center on Society and Health and lead author of the report, said in a statement. “This history includes story after story of the resilience and determination of the Black families of Northern Virginia to fight for civil rights and build a better future for their children.”

Woolf said the good news is that if policies got us here, policies can get us out. "Opening doors of opportunity for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American and other immigrants is good for our region, can strengthen the economy and will help make us whole," he said.

Click on the report title to read "Deeply Rooted: History’s Lessons for Equity in Northern Virginia."

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