Black Resistance in Fairfax County

My name is Sira Thiam, and I am a student researcher with the Black Lives Next Door project at George Mason University. I researched how local Fairfax communities cultivated cultures of resistance and built (Black) community in the 1960s-70s. The development of the county, specifically the development of George Mason College in 1962, fossilized patterns of inequality and racial segregation within displacement. In exploring resistance, I gave light to the Black voices who characterized the double consciousness of being Black in predominantly white spaces, and who created their own communities through a host of methods of resistance. I looked at organizations and individuals in and around George Mason’s campus who fought against racism. The three main organizations I focused on were Reston Black Focus, Ujamaa, and the Action Coordinating Committee to End Segregation in the Suburbs.

Hello, my name is Sira Thiam, and I am a student researcher with the Black Lives Next Door project at George Mason University. Over the summer, I researched how local Fairfax communities cultivated cultures of resistance and built (Black) community in the 1960s-70s. Our team familiarized itself with the development of the county, specifically the development of George Mason College in 1962, which fossilized patterns of inequality and racial segregation within displacement. I was interested in understanding more about the resistance and struggle Black student and community organizations engaged in during the time period. In exploring resistance, I gave light to the Black voices who characterized the double consciousness of being Black in predominantly white spaces, and who created their own communities through a host of methods of resistance. I looked at organizations and individuals in and around George Mason’s campus who fought against racism. The three main organizations I focused on were Reston Black Focus, Ujamaa, and the Action Coordinating Committee to End Segregation in the Suburbs. Reston Black Focus, founded in 1969, was a community organization in Reston that focused on the inclusion of Black communities, especially families, in the development and socio-political spaces within Reston. The organization not only fought for issues faced by Black Reston families, but also advocated for racial and economic equality more generally in the DMV area. In looking at the archives of the Reston Times newspaper in the Virginia Room at the Fairfax Public Library, I found an article covering an instance where the organization’s activism had an impact on a problematic community event. On March 5th, 1972, the Explorer Post No. 1970, a boy scout-like training program ran by local police, was going to hold a “Slave Sale,” where they hoped to ‘sell’ 23 young people in order to raise funds for a trip to Disney World. This obviously offensive event was published in the Reston Times the week beforehand, and Reston Black Focus put pressure on the organizers of the event to change the name and the auction format. This was done through both a meeting between Reston Black Focus members, Reston Community Association board members, and the Scout leader Steve McIntire the Friday prior to the event and a mass protest the day of the event, which ultimately led to a public apology by the Explorer Post troop and the change of the format. Elias Blake, a member of Reston Black Focus, spoke out at the event regarding the claims that bringing light to racist situations divides communities, stating that Reston is “a community that is all together, [and it is] divisive in the community (to have this activity) even if blacks don’t speak up… [Black families] was to be in the community or we wouldn’t be here, but the price is that we must be respected.” Efforts by the growing Black student population and Black administrators like Andy Evans, the newly hired Black admissions advisor who worked within the Office of Minority Affairs, and Reverend Dr. Darius Swann, Professor and the Special Assistant to the President for the Office of Minority Affairs, led to the formation of the first Black student organization at Mason, Ujamaa. The organization aimed to create connections both within the Black community at George Mason and with the larger Mason community. A major event that the group organized was called the Black Festival of Exposure. In February 1975, Ujamaa, alongside several academic departments and Mason offices, held a week-long ‘Black Festival of Exposure.’ The aim of this festival, in the words of Ujamaa president Octavia Stanton Caldwell, was to “ ‘expose’ GMU to its own Black population as well as exposing’ GMU to the Black population of the community and exposing different facets of the ebony lifestyle to not only Black, but also White segments of society.”[2] I found lots of information about Ujamaa through the Special Collections at Mason, whether that be through the Broadside newspaper collection, as seen in this picture of a new spread, or photographs of the Festival of Black Exposure in the Broadside photograph collection. The Action Coordinating Committee to End Segregation in the Suburbs, or ACCESS, was founded by James Charles Jones in June 1966. Pointing to the racial demographics of suburban regions that surround larger cities, Jones qualified the DMV as a “white ghetto surrounding the black ghetto.” ACCESS held a march in Northern Virginia from October 7th- 9th, 1966, as seen in this picture. The 25 marchers started at Gum Springs, a Black-majority area in Fairfax, and walked to Alexandria and Arlington over the 3 days. The group also held rallies and demonstrations during the march at sites like Black public housing buildings in Alexandria and all-White developments in Arlington. The ACCESS rally at Lubber Run Park in Arlington was met with racist counter-protests from local Nazi party members and the KKK, but the ACCESS protestors were not deterred, and continued their protest. My research this summer allowed me to discover the actions and perspectives of community and student organizations who fought for justice in the 1960s and 70s. I was able to develop archival skills through looking at public and university archives, and also was exposed to the field of public history more generally. I also built on previous research on social movements. I will be using these skills in my future academic career, especially as I start my Master’s program in Sociology this fall.