Qualla: Arlington View, Virginia

Arlington View, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. District Court for the Alexandria Division of the Eastern District of Virginia. 2/3/1871, Public domain. In 1947, a Black student named Constance Carter and her classmates at Hoffman-Boston High School filed suit against the Arlington County school board. They had photographs of their school's science room as exhibits - a few sinks, a few microscopes on dilapidated tables, a roof that leaked. They also had photographs from the all-white Washington-Lee High School a few miles north, with its laboratories, its full library, its gymnasium. The case, Carter v. School Board of Arlington County, went to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and Carter's side won. The ruling did not integrate Arlington's schools immediately. It did force the county to upgrade the Black school. By 1953 Hoffman-Boston had a separate elementary building, a gymnasium, and a cafeteria. By 1959 the schools were integrated. The neighborhood that surrounded Hoffman-Boston was called Johnson's Hill then. In 1965 the county renamed it Arlington View as part of an urban renewal plan. The lawsuit is mostly forgotten outside the neighborhood. The people who filed it are not.

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Image: U.S. District Court for the Alexandria Division of the Eastern District of Virginia. 2/3/1871 | Public domain

Arlington View, Virginia: From Plantation to Subdivision

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before the Civil War, the rolling land south of present-day Columbia Pike was a 100-acre plantation owned by John Robert Johnston. Johnston farmed the property with 15 enslaved people, growing a variety of crops. After emancipation in 1865, he employed some of his formerly enslav...

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Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 3.0

Arlington View, Virginia: The Jim Crow Squeeze

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Howell & Taylor, Public domain. By 1900 Johnson's Hill had developed a middle-class Black community institutionally anchored by the Jefferson School - a wood-frame schoolhouse for Black children - the Mount Zion Baptist Church relocated from Freedman's Village, and an Odd Fellows lodge. The community was govern...

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Image: Howell & Taylor | Public domain

Arlington View, Virginia: The Pentagon Squeezed Harder

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marjory Collins, Public domain. When the federal government broke ground for the Pentagon in 1941 and the Navy Annex shortly after, it used eminent domain to demolish the Black neighborhoods of East Arlington and Queen City, displacing over 900 residents and razing Mount Olive Baptist Church. Some of the displa...

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Image: Marjory Collins | Public domain

Arlington View, Virginia: Conservation, Highway, Gentrification

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wikipedian1234, CC0. In 1965 the county designated Johnson's Hill as a Conservation Area under federal urban renewal funding. The roads were finally paved. Sidewalks and gutters were installed. Cul-de-sacs were constructed at dead-end streets. The county renamed the neighborhood Arlington View - a na...

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Image: Wikipedian1234 | CC0