Black Heritage

25 Locations | Curated by Black Heritage Museum of Arlington

The Black Heritage Tour celebrates the history of African American residents of Arlington County.

The tour highlights the journey from enslavement to freedom, from refugees to business owners, and pillars of the community. Discover African Americans' contributions to the growth of Arlington and learn why their history is a central part of the county's shared history.

The 107th United States Colored Troops (USCT) in Arlington is an often overlooked story. This regiment of African American soldiers was stationed in Fort Ethan Allen and Fort Corcoran during the last days of the American Civil War. The photographs of the regiment in Arlington are some of the most…
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Starting in the 1930s, the park became a major hub for Black baseball clubs in the region, where game days were lively, social epicenters for the community.
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A strong believer in equal rights for all, Robinson provided help to those in need, whatever their race or age, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
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In the early 1900s, residents living in Halls Hill and High View Park established their own local stores, churches, and schools. Many of these businesses were family-owned “Ma and Pa” stores. They supported the predominantly African-American community of formerly enslaved people who settled there…
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Arlington House was not only home to the Custis-Lee family but also to sixty-three enslaved people who lived and worked there. Among those enslaved individuals was James Parks, also known as Jim Parks. Without him, the story of Arlington would not be complete.
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Early in the Civil War, fighting between Northern and Southern armies drove thousands of African-Americans to seek freedom and refuge behind Union lines. By 1862, their growing numbers forced the Federal government to address the problem of supporting the formerly enslaved and their emancipation…
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Multiple generations of the Jones family, both enslaved and free before the Civil War, lived in Arlington’s Green Valley/Nauck neighborhood and helped build an active and thriving African American community there. The earliest records are for Edy Jones, who was mentioned in a February 1786 list…
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Evelyn Syphax devoted much of her time to education. She served as chairman of the Arlington School Board and led a successful overhaul of the county’s desegregation plan to reduce long bus rides for minority students.
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After seeing how many Blacks in Arlington County had to accept unsafe and inadequate conditions in the predominantly segregated Northern Virginia housing market, the couple began to concentrate on building well-crafted and affordable homes for their community.
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Hall's Hill/High View Park (HHHVP) commemorates the history and values of this predominantly African-American community. In 2004, artist Winnie Owens-Hart, a native of Hall's Hill, was commissioned to develop two artworks to reflect on the neighborhood's history. Memory Bricks grew…
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One of the lesser-known Black communities was Pelham Town, a small neighborhood near the Marymount Campus, between today’s 24th Street and N. Wakefield Street.
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As Freedman’s Village began to decline - and especially after it was closed in 1900 - residents of the Village had to find new places to live. One such area was the nearby community known as East Arlington. Within East Arlington, two acres of land were purchased by the Mount Olive Baptist Church…
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Born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree (sometimes written as Bomfree) in 1797, Truth was enslaved in Dutch-speaking Ulster County, New York, where she was bought and sold four times throughout her life. In 1827, she escaped with her daughter, Sophia, after her master failed to uphold the recently…
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The Lomax African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church was built in 1922 and is the oldest African-American church in Arlington. In 1963, when Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington and delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he also visited Arlington. King delivered a speech in…
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Dr. Charles Drew pioneered blood banking from the 1920s to 1940s and lived in a modest two-story frame house in North Arlington. He was also the first African American to receive a Doctorate of Science in Medicine. As Chief of Surgery at Freedmen's Hospital (now Howard University Hospital),…
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