This month, the Wayback Machine will take us back to May 1958. In the newspapers of the day, my favorite headline was this one: “You Can’t Do a Paper in Arlington Libraries – No Place to Sit Down.” This was a clever article in support of a bond referendum, to pay for the acquisition of a site for a centrally located library building. The County had its eyes on a site on Quincy Street – exactly where the Central Library is now located (yes, the bond measure passed). The director of the library system was desperately looking for space not just for reading, but also for programming for children and teenagers. 

The month of May has been “budget decision time” in Arlington for many decades. In May of 1958, the fifth budget conference of the Board contemplated an operating budget of $9.2 million dollars, with a proposed $3.6 million capital improvements budget. Those funds were in addition to the $8 million bond referendum, which would help to build a new library and a new Courthouse.  

For school issues, the “Red Scare” of Communism became a focus of much controversy. Earlier in the spring, a teacher was fired because she had been a member of the Communist Party from the mid-1930s until 1945. As a follow-up, School Board members Bob Peck and Helen Lane proposed a motion to require all current schoolteachers to sign a “non-Communist oath.” The discussion got heated, taking up over four hours of the school board meeting, with Board member Barnard Joy stating this was “approaching the area of witch-hunting.” The motion was defeated by a vote of 3 to 2, but a swing vote resulted in approval of another motion, which required all newly-hired teachers to sign an oath that they were “not now and never were” a member of the Communist Party, or a member of a “subversive organization”.  

Why was the School Board so focused on Communism? I wonder if it was related to the General Assembly session that passed several anti-NAACP laws, creating a Committee on Offenses Against the Administration of Justice. This committee was tasked with uncovering evidence that the NAACP was a subversive entity, operating as a “communist front”. (Yes, governmental pushback against diversity and inclusion is not a new thing.) In 1958, Virginia’s massive resistance to the integration of schools was hitting a four-year peak, with Governor James Almond threatening to close school systems in Arlington and Norfolk. Almond was proposing not only to close the schools, but also to use the school buildings for private schools for white children.  

In the midst of all this, one headline jumped out at me as a sliver of hope: “Federation Takes Negro Association.” This article noted that “…the Nauck Citizens Association is the first Negro group to be given membership in the Civic Federation.” There had been a split vote in the Federation’s membership committee, but when the application went to a ballot vote of the full membership, the Nauck civic association was admitted by a vote of 51 to 7. 

The saddest headline in the news posed a challenging question: “How Can We Prevent Tragic Drownings At Great Falls?” Two college students had drowned in the Great Falls of the Potomac River, which was a popular spot for youth to climb onto the rocks and wade into the river. In 1957 there had been fifteen drownings at Great Falls. Since then, many warning signs have gone up, including this one: “If you enter the river, you will die.” Unfortunately, to this day the average number of annual deaths is seven. 

On a lighter note, let me end with a 1958 article on Malcolm Ross, an Arlington resident working as an atmospheric scientist for the Naval Reserve. Ross was highlighted for soaring 40,000 feet above the earth in a hot-air balloon, to obtain nautical observations for future interplanetary flight. Ross would set a still-standing record for the highest altitude in a balloon, going over 100,000 feet in the air in 1961. Stories about the dangers of his rapid descents are quite remarkable – look it up!