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Trace Elements
African American Heritage Trail traces Leesburg's racial history: For blacks living in pre-Civil Rights Leesburg, it was the best of times and it was the worst of times.
The African American Heritage Trail, a walking and driving tour in Leesburg, shows that neighborhoods were integrated, but important social events were not.
The black high school, Douglass, was built right on the main street of Leesburg, not relegated to the back of the town as it would have been in a lot of southern areas. But this was done in spite of the stonewalling efforts of the all-white school board. Inside, the classrooms were bare bones: no new books, no band uniforms, no sports equipment. Transportation to and from this high school was incomplete and unreliable.
Loudoun's black leaders, men and women alike, formed the County-Wide League to represent black interests. Together with the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League was given equal opportunity to speak and afforded every courtesy in a public forum. However, after the meeting, some of the black men and women who had voiced their concerns found themselves unemployed. Black business owners who had stepped forward and asked for equal treatment saw a devastating drop in the number of white customers.
Thus it went until the 1950s and 1960s when black heroes, local and national, united under the banner of the Civil Rights movement and decided the worst of times were going to end.
The tour is born
Historian Deborah Lee, of Purcellville, a woman who earned a doctorate in multicultural studies, has spent a significant portion of her career documenting, recording and researching the racial patterns of Loudoun, past and present. When the Loudoun Museum received a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, she was asked to direct a project, a project that would end successfully with the comprehensive walking-driving tour of Leesburg's African-American historic sites.
These sites include the Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction, and Bailey's Institute. The Odd Fellows Hall. Providence Baptist Church. Mount Zion United Methodist Church.
Places like these, and the events that happened inside their walls, were remembered with pride with the development in 2002 of the African American Heritage Trail tour and pamphlet.
"We formed a committee of people in the community, which included African Americans who had lived in Leesburg and lived in Loudoun County for a long time," Lee said. "I also contacted white researchers who knew about Loudoun's black history, and we met monthly."
The venture was a partnership of the Black History Committee of the Friends of Thomas Balch Library and the Loudoun Museum.
The committee included local icons.
Lou Etta Watkins, of Leesburg, joined. Watkins had made a point of attending all those long-ago school board meetings during which the needs of the black students were ignored.
"Lou Etta Watkins attended every school board meeting, and she would speak up," Lee said. "She wanted better transportation. Douglass didn't get as good buses. Parents had to pay to carpool their children to school. The school board would say, ‘Yes, we hear you,' but they didn't do anything about it."
Other leaders for change who joined the committee were Mary Randolph, of Leesburg, Elaine Thompson, of Hamilton and Betty Morefield, of Hillsboro.
While not a member of the Black History Committee, Wilson Townsend also helped develop the tour and accompanying pamphlet.
History revealed
One of the first photographs in the pamphlet is the Loudoun Museum itself. This building housed several black-owned businesses, including Nathan Johnson's butcher shop and later John Simms' restaurant, the Do Drop Inn.
Just up the road at 4 Loudoun St. was Verdie Robinson's Barber Shop, a whites-only enterprise. African Americans had to go to Robinson's home if they wanted a haircut.
A few blocks away is the intersection of Market and Church streets with Edwards Ferry Road.
The pamphlet reports: "Sledding was a popular winter pastime. During snowy days in Leesburg until the 1930s, these streets would be blocked off and used exclusively for sledding, but blacks and whites mingled only at the crossroads. Black children sledded down Church Street while white children went down Market or Edwards Ferry or ‘anywhere they wanted.'"
Lee explained that this was not an unusual dichotomy.
"During pre-Civil War times, integrated communities, geographically speaking, were not that unusual, but often they became more segregated over time but Leesburg did not," Lee said.
"And that was a certain source of pride in the African-American community. While there were facilitated social interactions between the races, there was still a line. You might play with someone on the streets and be good friends in some ways, but never be invited to a formal occasion like a birthday party."
Lee indicated that one of the times things got a lot uglier was when blacks began to agitate for change.
"[The school board] would say, ‘Yes, we understand you need better schools, but there's no money,'" Lee said. "They would delay, and as long as people didn't push too long at those barriers, everything was fine."
When the County-Wide League began lobbying for Douglass High School, however, the opposition upped the ante.
"As far as Douglass was concerned, you could lose your job if you spoke in favor of it or joined the County-Wide League," Lee said. "John Wanzer, the president, was self-employed, so he had a little more freedom. But a lot of his customers were white, and his business did suffer from his activity there."
When the school board wanted to build a black high school on the farm owned by the Cooks, a black family in Purcellville, the County-Wide League took the initiative to find a more central location. Parents got together and purchased property in Leesburg, signed the deed at night and gave it to the school board for $1, Lee said.
To raise money for science lab equipment, band instruments and uniforms, the League would hold fund raisers at the Odd Fellows Hall on Royal Street.
Lee explained that Charles Houston, an attorney from Washington, D.C., and the NAACP, were, at one point, working on a legal strategy to show that separate but equal was not equal.
"They were gathering evidence and they wanted Loudoun County to be a test case in that," Lee said. "But the County-Wide League then split because people disagreed on how to proceed. And they did ultimately agree to take the school rather than pressing the legal case."
Lee indicated the racial atmosphere today has improved from what it was 40 and 50 years ago.
"There is still a close sense of community both in Leesburg and Loudoun County," Lee said. "People still seem much connected and caring about one another and perhaps more integrated, too, than some places."
Contact the writer at ecarlton@timespapers.com
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