Letters to the Editor: January 15 – 21, 2015
Thanks for Help With Tinner Hill Anniversary
Editor,
This past weekend Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the group that became the first rural branch of the NAACP.
We celebrated the dedication of the Tinner Hill Historic Site located at 106-108 Tinner Hill Road that straddles the Fairfax County/Falls Church City border and nearly 200 elected officials and residents attended the ceremony, in spite of frigid temperatures.
The Tinner Hill community is an important part of our communities’ history. For over 150 years, members of the same family and extended family have lived in the early 20th century homes on the hill. The Tinner Hill community was once part of a larger, vibrant African American community in Falls Church. It is where the battle for equality and justice in rural Virginia began, was waged and won! Today, the descendants of a dozen African American families that still worship, socialize and trace their roots to pre-civil war Falls Church are part of this community.
How many residents of the city can say their family has lived in Falls Church for six generations? Or their family members attend the same church grandparents or great grandparents founded in the 1860s here in the city?
This is an important historical legacy and we should embrace the families who have been here and remain in the city!
This coming weekend, in celebration of the 100th Anniversary and in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. everyone will have an opportunity to learn the history of this fascinating community at Creative Cauldron with a concert reading of Tinner Hill Portraits in Black and White and a history bus tour, Giving Voice: African American Heritage Tour.
We’d like to thank everyone who helped bring this to fruition, including all of those who helped to make the occasion a celebration to remember.
Nikki Graves Henderson, M.P.A.
Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation
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