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Arlington's Roberta Flack Gets Her Start at Mr. Henry's

Arlington's Roberta Flack Gets Her Start at Mr. Henry's

09/04/2014 in DC by Phillip Jackson

Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Roberta Flack started playing the piano at an early age. When she was five, her family moved to the Nauck community in Arlington and she took up the organ, lending her musical talents to Macedonia Baptist Church. At 15, she entered Howard University with a full music scholarship and, by 19, she was a college graduate seeking.

She accepted a position in a segregated school district in Farmville, North Carolina and wound up being the only music teacher for 1300 students, kindergarten through 12th grade. “I lost 40 pounds and almost had a nervous breakdown but we did some beautiful things that year.”

Flack returned to Washington and taught at Rabaut Junior High School and Brown Junior High School. In the evenings, she started performing – first at the Tivoli Theatre in Columbia Heights and then at Mr. Henry’s, a Capitol Hill nightclub at 6th and Pennsylvania Ave, SE, which was owned by Henry Yaffe.

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Virginia

Meeting the Community's Needs: Arlington's Friendly Cab Company

07/23/2014 in Virginia by Phillip Jackson

In the 1940s, Jim Crow held strong in Arlington, Virginia. African-Americans encountered discrimination at segregated eating establishments, businesses and recreation facilities. Even access to medical care was divided along racial lines.

African American mothers were barred from the maternity ward at Arlington Hospital and were expected to travel to hospitals in Washington, D.C. or Alexandria to give birth. For many black Arlingtonians, getting to D.C. was difficult – especially in a medical emergency – as many could not afford cars of their own.

In 1947, three men with bright ideas and business ingenuity stepped up to fill the void.

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Virginia
Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, 21 Steps at a Time

Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, 21 Steps at a Time

07/02/2014 in Virginia by Ellen Wexler

Lloyd Cosby remembers standing on the plaza at Arlington Cemetery, inspecting a guard change at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, when an elderly woman approached him. “Are the guards here at night?” she asked.

It was the late 1950s, during the year and seven months that Cosby served as the Tomb guards’ platoon leader. Later that day, the woman would tell Cosby about her son who had died at war, but had never been identified. The Tomb of the Unknowns was the only place she could come to pay her respects.

“Yes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” Cosby told her. “Every second of every minute of every day.”

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DC
Sit-ins Come to Arlington

Sit-ins Come to Arlington

06/22/2014 in DC by Mark Jones

Shortly after 1 p.m. on June 9, 1960 a biracial contingent of college students entered the People’s Drug Store at Lee Highway and Old Dominion Dr. in Arlington and requested service at the store’s lunch counter. Less than a mile away, a similar group sat down at the counter at the Cherrydale Drug Fair.

Both lunch counters promptly closed.

Still, the students did not move. In fact, they remained seated for hours, calmly reading books and Bibles until well after dark, in protest of the stores’ refusal to serve African American patrons at their lunch counters.

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DC
DC Hosts the Civil War of Horse Racing, 1822

DC Hosts the Civil War of Horse Racing, 1822

06/06/2014 in DC by Claudia Swain

In the 19th century, the North and South waged an important battle. No, not the Civil War- horse racing! Before the war between the states with military and espionage there was a stirring contest fought with the finest horses that either side could breed, and the first battle took place right in the heart of Washington D.C., at the National Course somewhere around 14th Street, north of Euclid Street and south of Columbia Heights.

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Virginia

Arlington's Little Saigon

05/08/2014 in Virginia by Mark Jones

For about 10 years following the fall of Saigon in April 1975, Arlington, Virginia became a destination for Vietnamese immigrants fleeing communist rule. Then, almost as quickly as it had developed, Arlington's so called "Little Saigon" faded away. Check out the video below!

[video:http://watch.weta.org/video/2365242308/]

 

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Virginia
All the ‘Hoos Down in ‘Hooville: The Persistent Myth of the Grinch in Charlottesville

All the ‘Hoos Down in ‘Hooville: The Persistent Myth of the Grinch in Charlottesville

03/21/2014 in Virginia by Lacy Baugher

High on Lewis Mountain, to the west of the picturesque college town of Charlottesville, sits a house that looks down on the famous University of Virginia. According to legend, Massachusetts resident Dr. Theodore Giesel  – better known to the majority of the world as Dr. Seuss – lived in the house after his application to the university was rejected.

Giesel was allegedly so upset over being snubbed by UVA that he purchased a house on the hill overlooking the school, because its elevated location allowed him to “look down” on the institution that rejected him. The setting is also allegedly the inspiration behind his famous children’s book How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Which does, after all, come with repeated references to all those ‘Hoos down in ‘Hooville – something that UVA students, nicknamed “Wahoos” – or ‘Hoos for short – in honor of a particular type of fish, have always embraced.

Hmmm... could it be true?

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DC

History Bloggers Rejoice! Getty Now Allows Free Embeds of Images

03/06/2014 in DC by Mark Jones

One of the big challenges to writing a history blog is finding good images. Well, things just got a lot easier with Getty's announcement that it is making up to 35 million images available for bloggers to embed in their sites for free. The company has created a new embed tool that allows images to be shared and includes proper photo credit information. See an example of the new tool at work after the jump.

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DC

Oscar-Winner "12 Years a Slave" is a Reminder of the Local Slave Trade

03/03/2014 in DC by Patrick Kiger

Director Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, serves to highlight a horrific and shameful part of local history — the area's role as a transit depot and resale market for humans held in involuntary servitude.

The acclaimed film tells the true story of Solomon Northup, a free African-American violinist who in 1841 traveled from his home in New York to Washington, DC, with the promise of a high-paying job as a circus musician. He didn't know that his prospective employers actually were slave traders. 

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Virginia
The Strange Arlington Saga of Ignacy Jan Paderewski

The Strange Arlington Saga of Ignacy Jan Paderewski

02/05/2014 in Virginia by Patrick Kiger

WETA's local documentary, Arlington National Cemetery gives a poignant look at one of our nation's most hallowed grounds and offers a inside view of the cemetery's operations and history. But, since it's impossible to include everything in a one-hour documentary, we've been looking for other interesting Arlington stories to explore here on the blog.

So, along those lines, allow us to introduce you to one of Poland's greatest heroes, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who took a hiatus from his career as a world-renowned pianist and composer to serve as that nation's first Prime Minister. What does this have to do with Arlington? Find out after the jump.

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