More than a hundred years after its founding and sixty since its erasure, Fairfax County Park Authority will commemorate the lost-but-not-forgotten Black community of The Pines at a ceremonial unveiling of interpretive signage on October 25, marking the occasion with reflections from community members and a musical tribute. Local historians like me, other community members and, in recent years, scholars at the Center for Mason Legacies, all have worked to document, retain and revive the enduring legacy of this semi-rural community founded on African American land at the last turn of the century, located behind what is now Inova Fairfax Hospital.
By the mid-1960s, The Pines had expanded to include dozens of multi-generational residences beneath its dense pine canopy, truck farms and a saw mill, civic associations including an Oddfellows clubhouse, and a still thriving house of worship, the First Baptist Church of Merrifield, and a burial ground, all Black-operated and -owned. Their scattering reflects a broader history of African American landownership, community development, and the loss of Black-owned property, and generational wealth through government acquisition, in which African American families built homes, established communities, and created lasting ties to the land. Its loss through government taking disrupts valuable connections, robbing them of generational wealth and undermining future stability.
In 1965-1966, county authorities decided The Pines land was needed for a new school. Through "condemnation" (a process similar to eminent domain), the school board purchased the land from its stunned owners at prices far below the cost of acquiring equivalent homes and mere fractions of what the land would eventually have been worth to its owners' descendants. They were given no time to contest the decision legally and, due to segregation and political suppression, lacked civic clout to fight it—a pattern in keeping with scholarship on suburban development across the United States and echoed in CML research on Northern Virginia, including Fairfax County. Politically marginalized groups have long made "easy marks" for cheap public land acquisition, as CML's research repeatedly finds.
For me, loss of The Pines is personal: My grandmother and her siblings owned a 20-acre farm there. After they were forced out, she moved to Williamstown, another Black community, but never recovered emotionally from the loss of her home and tight-knit community. Ironically, the site was intended for one of the county's first desegregated high schools, but it was never built. The property remained vacant for decades. The Park Authority acquired it in the 1990s and soccer fields were planned. The adjacent park obscured the overgrown and untended graves of my grandparents' and ancestors' community.
As a Pines descendant, I believe the unveiling of this marker is an important opportunity to recognize this history and ensure that the community's story is preserved and shared with future generations. Gratifyingly, it coincides with the work I am able to perform for The Pines and other communities in the region through my role at the Center for Mason Legacies.