For my monthly “Front-Page History” column, instead of choosing one date from the past, I am selecting stories over a period of time, from the archives of a Black-owned newspaper, the Washington Afro-American. In 1892, John Murphy Sr., a formerly enslaved Black man who fought for the Union in the Civil War, established a Baltimore newspaper, the Afro-American. The newspaper became a central voice for Blacks in Baltimore, and subsequently, the Washington Afro-American was established as an important source of news for the regional Black community. Its archives are also a significant resource for historians. Their articles on civil rights struggles include details one will not find in the archives of other newspapers. Let me touch upon three examples of their coverage of Arlington stories. 

In 1947 the NAACP filed a lawsuit in the name of a Black student, Constance Carter. Their strategy was to require Arlington to provide equal educational facilities in its segregated schools. At the trial in 1949 it was clear that the facilities of all-Black Hoffman-Boston High School were far inferior to the facilities at the all-White Washington-Lee High School. In a baffling decision that ignored the evidence of inequality, the trial court ruled in favor of the school board (though that decision was overturned on appeal). Other newspapers in the region provided minimal coverage. The Washington Afro-American had a reporter present at the trial, which enabled the paper to provide significant details that would otherwise have been lost to history.  One example relates to the testimony of expert witnesses on educational and psychological matters. One witness described paintings in the art room at Washington-Lee High School that depicted five different nationalities; the painting of the Black race had two men “shooting craps.” One quote from this witness stands out: “This can do something to every white boy that attends that school.”  

The second example takes us to September of 1957, when the NAACP devised a lawsuit strategy to desegregate Arlington’s schools. To file the lawsuit, it was necessary to send students to the White schools and specifically be denied the right to enroll. On September 5, 1957, several Black students, accompanied by parents, and other volunteer adults, went into the administrative offices of five schools, asked for an enrollment form, and were turned away. Basic elements of this story were captured in various newspapers, but the article in the September 7, 1957 edition of the Washington Afro-American had extensive coverage, including interviews with the students and their parents beforehand. Those articles supplied a glimpse into the anxieties felt by the students, and by their parents. The threat of violence was so real that the three students who went to apply at Stratford Junior High were accompanied by a White woman, Geraldine Davis, the treasurer of the Arlington NAACP.  Her response to the “why are you doing this?” question sticks with me to this day: ““I had heard blood would be shed, and if any blood was going to be shed, it should be mine.” 

The third example of the unique voice of the Washington Afro-American takes us to July 23, 1960, and the trial of two Howard University students arrested for trespass at the Howard Johnson Restaurant in Arlington. Earlier that year there had been sit-ins at various drug stores, intended to break the practice of private businesses who would refuse service to Blacks. In response to those sit-ins, the Virginia General Assembly passed a new trespass law that allowed a business owner to order any person off his property for any reason. Again, the Washington Afro-American had a reporter at the trial, whose article captured the back-and-forth statements of the lawyers and the magistrate.  The desperate prosecuting attorney, trying to argue that the new law was not racially motivated, asserted it was a broad law, such that an owner could keep people away for any reason, even if “…they have white hair or green ties.” 

So many stories, and so little time to give you all the details! But be assured, the Washington Afro-American was valuable to the Black community at the time it was published, and it remains valuable as a historical resource.