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Black History Month: Daniel's Story


This story was written by Daniel Adams, a Black Peer Recovery Specialist, who lives in Arlington, VA: 


“This is about where I come from and how the Adams family lived in this area before the largest office building in Arlington was built. My oldest sister's birthday was yesterday, at the tender young age of 82. Claudia was born in Arlington, VA. Where the Pentagon was built was an African American neighborhood in South Arlington. 


A new historical marker has brought the history of that community—Queen City—and its residents to future generations. Queen City, by the late 1930s, had matured into a neighborhood of about 900 residents, plus businesses on the eastern end of Columbia Pike. I presently live on Columbia Pike. I was born in Freedman's hospital, in 1961.


The community grew up around a church established nearby in the late 1800s by former residents of Freedman's Village, which had served as temporary housing for those emancipated from slavery in the 1860s. In the early 1940s, with the nation preparing for war, President Roosevelt personally selected a nearby site for the location of the War Department building.


Historically, stories like this have been the plight of the formerly enslaved after the so-called emancipation. Former slaves, known as African Americans, have always struggled to build communities, only to be destroyed by the power structure that has pledged to keep my people in a state of complete economic servitude, which was the foundation of slavery. Throughout the United States in the 20th century, it has been a plan to destroy former slaves' neighborhoods. We are being revisited by the historical context of wiping out a people's history, their story of who they were, what they have accomplished, and what they have contributed to the establishment of the New World. The formerly enslaved, presently African American, have built and then later destroyed, and then rebuilt, only to be destroyed again. My people's history is the history of the United States. There is no such a thing as a people without history. Arlington, VA, is rich in stories about Black and Indigenous history. We will not let them rob us of our story.”



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