Black Communities of Fairfax: A History

The story of Black Fairfax has long been untold.

The free Black population of Fairfax Court House dates to at least the 1820s. After the Civil War, newly freed Black citizens expanded the hamlet of Jermantown dramatically. Additional segregated neighborhoods, including School Street, which overlapped today’s George Mason University, and Ilda, off Guinea Road, grew and thrived. In the second half of the nineteenth century residents built schools, churches, and a cemetery. These families persevered under Jim Crow in the early twentieth century. After incorporation, the City of Fairfax annexed these historically Black localities, and their separate character began to disappear. This group of authors with deep roots in Fairfax tells the stories of their communities.

Etta Willson is a longtime genealogist and poetic writer about her family and her ancestors. Rita Colbert is the Fairfax City Black community photo acquisitions coordinator, receiving photo albums after friends and family pass away. Rondia Prescott is vice-president of the Jermantown Cemetery Preservation Society and Fairfax County Public Schools SAC program assistant director. All three were longtime residents of the Black Fairfax City communities, now gone. Linneall Naylor, president of the Jermantown Cemetery Preservation Society and FCPS teacher, was raised in D.C. but returned to find her roots. She is a well-regarded family history speaker. Jenee Lindner is a Fairfax County History commissioner and longtime resident of Fairfax County and gives Fairfax City/County historical lectures. She has a master’s degree from Stanford University in education and history. She has also found family roots in these communities.