Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation Statement on the Verdict in the Chauvin Trial
On Tuesday, April 20, 2021, twelve men and women convicted former policeman Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd. Rejoicing and relief followed. Those reactions were accompanied by an immediate and growing recognition that the momentous verdict was but a turning point in the much more complex and critical task: ending prejudices, practices, and racism in all its guises.
Two eminent African American leaders articulated this challenging mission in the following words:
Keith Ellison, Attorney General for the State of Minnesota:
"I would not call today’s verdict justice because justice implies restoration. But it is accountability, which is the first step toward justice. Now the cause of justice is in your hands."
Barack Obama, former President of the United States:
"While today’s verdict may have been a necessary step on the road to progress, it was far from a sufficient one. We cannot rest. We will need to follow through with the concrete reforms that will reduce and eliminate racial bias in our criminal justice system."
The Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation affirms the joy in this critical verdict and recognizes that the work ahead will be challenging, arduous, but rewarding as the fight for justice and equality always is.
Basketball pioneer, physical educator, civil right activist, and author, Dr. E.B. Henderson, will be commemorated with a new Virginia state historical marker.
Thanks to the students at Kings Glen Elementary School in Springfield, VA, Dr. E. B. Henderson is one of several Virginians to be commemorated with state historical markers. It will be erected in the City of Falls Church.
The 2021 Historical Marker Student Celebration took place on Monday, April 19, 2021. Attendees included Governor and Mrs. Northam, students, teachers, and staff from Kings Glen Elementary, and Edwin. B. Henderson, II, the grandson of Dr. Edwin B. Henderson.
The Black History Month Historical Marker Contest began in 2020 and 20 markers were announced in commemoration of Juneteenth, 2020. Of those new signs, 10 were suggested by students across the state. Gov. Northam stated in a release, “Historical markers are a unique and visible way to educate the public about our history and we need to do a better job of recognizing Black Virginians who have played prominent roles in areas like improving education, championing equal justice, deepening faith communities, and advancing science, technology, and medicine throughout our history.”
In addition to Dr. Henderson, the 2021 selections, nominated by students, include Dangerfield and Harriet Newby, Mary Richards Bowser, Tuskegee Airman John Lyman Whitehead Jr., and Samuel P. Bolling.
The University of the District of Columbia will rename its sports facility in honor of Dr. E.B. Henderson
In February 2021, the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) announced it will rename its sports complex after Dr. E.B. Henderson, the acknowledged "Father of Black Basketball." This is part of a memorial project UDC launched in 2021 to remember his legacy. His grandson, Edwin. B. Henderson, II, said "Edwin B. Henderson set the tone and created the infrastructure for African American participation in athletics by creating leagues and associations for black athletes and referees when no such thing previously existed.”
Dr. Henderson graduated in 1904 from Miner Teachers College which later became the University of the District of Columbia. He studied physical education at Harvard University and was the first African American in the United States to be certified to teach it. While at Harvard, he was introduced to basketball, and in turn, introduced the sport to African Americans in Washington, DC. Dr. Henderson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013.
Edwin B. Henderson, center front, 1910 basketball team, 12th Street YMCA, Wash., DC. Photo: The Black Fives Foundation
Guest Commentary: F.C.’s Tinner Hill Remains a Benchmark for Racial Progress
IN COMMEMORATION OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH, WE ARE PLEASED TO SHARE AN ARTICLE
WRITTEN BY IRENE CHAMBERS, PRESIDENT, TINNER HILL HERITAGE FOUNDATION THAT
APPEARED RECENTLY IN THE FALLS CHURCH NEWS PRESS.
Statement on the Death of George Floyd
1920
The original flag was flown outside the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s New York City headquarters to make known the event of a lynching.
2020
Found missing on June 17, 2020. Anyone who may have information concerning this banner, please contact the Falls Church Police Department.
2020
July 2, 2020...Thanks to All who supported this banner!
TINNER HILL HERITAGE FOUNDATION AND ITS AUXILIARY, THE SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMITTEE OF FALLS CHURCH
We wish to express our condolences to the families and the loved ones of George Floyd. We understand and feel your pain and we grieve with you during this difficult time. George Floyd’s death is another name in a long and troubling era in the American narrative of how African American lives have been snuffed out by law enforcement in this nation.
This tragic event reminds us of the iconic photograph showing the NAACP headquarters in New York with a flag reading “A Man Was Lynched Today” hanging from the window. This was a lynching by a knee instead of a noose, caught in full detail by video cameras from those standing by and one store-front camera. We have yet to see the videos from the officers' body cameras. For eight minutes and forty-six seconds, an officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck. For over two minutes after Mr. Floyd was motionless.
We are somewhat relieved that all four officers, there on the scene, were charged and arrested for second degree murder. But why were charges so long in coming? Police officers should not be above the law but it is rare that a charge against an officer is successfully prosecuted. We will wait with baited-breath and watch closely to see what happens to these four officers. We hope for a resounding conviction of all who committed this heinous act upon George Floyd.
The needless and wrongful deaths of unarmed African Americans is nothing new. The use of deadly force on unarmed African Americans too often is allowed, too often resulting in death. This has to stop, because enough is enough! “Black Lives Matter” is more than a catchy slogan. America’s history of systemic racism goes back to the beginning of the American Colonies when, in 1619, “30 and Odd” enslaved Africans arrived at Point Comfort near Hampton, Virginia and thus began our nation’s dependence on African slavery as its means of production in a new world. Slavery is often referred to as “America’s Original Sin.” So, from Africa to 250 years of Slavery, from Emancipation and Reconstruction, to 100 years of Jim Crow and segregation, to 60 years since Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. marched for civil rights, Black people have lived in fear of their lives from law enforcement. And until Black Lives Matter as much as white lives and all lives matter, this problem will exist.
People are protesting George Floyd’s death in cities, not just in the United States, but in many countries as well. The world is watching what is happening in our country and they are appalled at these actions and inactions on the part of our nation's law enforcement. African Americans are legally entitled to and deserve the same protection under the law that whites enjoy. Serious reform needs to be made on the part of law enforcement and the criminal justice system in the United States. As a nation we can, and we must, do better. Enough is enough!
Sincerely,
Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation Board of Directors and Social Justice Committee of Falls Church
Virginia Middle-schoolers Reflect on Blackface and Racism
Check out CBS This Morning’s video Virginia middle schoolers reflect on blackface and racism
Scandals at the highest levels of Virginia's government are forcing some of the state's younger residents to have difficult conversations about race. After a racist photo was discovered on Gov. Ralph Northam's 1984 yearbook page, he and the state's third highest ranking official admitted they wore blackface when they were young men. This week, students at Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School spent their civics class learning about the history of blackface. Michelle Miller reports.
Local Commentary: Annual Tinner Hill March to Honor Martin Luther King
Check out a local commentary in the Falls Church News Press on the Annual Tinner Hill March to Honor Martin Luther King by Edwin B. Henderson, II and Irene Chambers.
The Deep Root Origins of Tinner Hill’s Blues Festival
Originally published on Falls Church News-Press by Drew Costley
American Piedmont bluesman John Jackson plays at the Tinner Hill Street Festival, which was renamed the Tinner Hill Blues Festival, in 2000. (Photos: Ed Henderson)
Back in 1994, Ed Henderson, with his wife Nikki -- the principal organizer of the annual Tinner Hill Blues Festival -- had just gotten back into town from a fellowship to study in Africa and encountered something that would play a key role in creating an institution in The Little City.
At the time, it was the first year of what was called the Tinner Hill Street Festival, which was started at the suggestion of Jim Edmonds, then the owner of Foxes Music Company. According to Henderson, the facilitator of the first street festival was Dave Eckert.
Henderson said that the original festival was held on the land where developers are currently building the Lincoln at Tinner Hill on S. Maple Street. Local black church choirs performed and there were vendors, including Henderson, who sold wares that he brought back from Africa.
The following year, the festival was held on Wallace Street, where it would take place for a number of years before moving to 106 and 108 Tinner Hill Road, the historic site where black Falls Church residents met in 1915 to fight a segregation law in the city. Eventually, the festival was moved Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School, then to Cherry Hill Park, where it’s held now and where it will be this Saturday, to allow more space for festival goers.
Since those first several years of the Tinner Hill Street Festival, which eventually became the Tinner Hill Blues Festival, the festival has grown from a local, homegrown event to a national and international affair. According to the Hendersons, festival attendance has grown from the hundreds in the first few years of its existence to the thousands in more recent years.
And with that growth comes change, including change of venue. “One of the reasons we wanted to move to the Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School was that we wanted to grow the festival,” said Nikki Graves Henderson, the other principal organizer of the festival. The couple also runs the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation, an organization with the mission of preserving the black history of Falls Church through various programs and initiatives.
“We did a self-analysis and surveyed the people who attended the festival,” she said. “We did a feasibility study of the land over there and all of our programs and the consultant we hired said that the festival had the most potential of all, so we focused on growing the festival, making it more professional, expanding the audience and decided to move to the middle school.”
She continued that the middle school was new and, at the time, had no mature trees and was all blacktop. “It was hotter than Hades,” she said. So, at the suggestion of blues lover Lindy Hockenberry, who was then a City Council member, the festival was converted into a strictly blues festival and moved to Cherry Hill Park.
Before then, the festival showcased all kinds of music – reggae, gospel, hip-hop – but Hockenberry thought that the festival could focus on blues in order to highlight the City’s blues history and love of the genre.
The Hendersons, and the festival’s other organizers, which now includes a committee of eight to ten people to steer its vision, have had to overcome several challenges through the years to make sure the festival was not only self-sustaining, but able to help sustain the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation’s other programs.
Some of the major challenges over the years have been the bad weather, competing with other festivals for performers, finding funders and sponsorship for the event and getting people to pay for the festival in recent years who remember when the festival was free. One of the ways the organizers of the festival have overcome that last challenge was to constantly reinvent the event, which has grown from a one-day to a three-day affair.
“We’ve constantly had to do assessments of what worked, what didn’t work and to create new ways of what we are doing every year,” Ed Henderson said. “In the beginning it was more of a family affair, a community event, and then with the preservation work it grew and grew.
In recent years, planning for the event typically starts eight months in advance, the Hendersons said, and 60 to 85 volunteers work the festival, way up from “a dedicated few” who helped put on the festival its early years.
The caliber and notoriety of the musicians booked to play the festival has also changed over the years. A recent favorite of Nikki Graves Henderson was in 2009 when Chuck Brown and Bobby Parker performed the blues.
“We focused on professionalizing the festival and being more consistent with the caliber of the musicians that we book,” she said. “In the beginning we tried to use mostly local musicians, but realized that there was a niche for national musicians because local musicians, you can see them anytime. Any weekend, any day of the week you can go to different parts of the city or region and see somebody. But the big draw became having someone who you can’t normally see all the time.”
Nikki Graves Henderson said that there is still a “cross-pollination” of artists each year, with shows exhibiting Falls Church’s local blues musicians along with national artists. Because, despite its national and international appeal, this is a local event with economic benefit for the City.
“It’s about the community, but it’s also larger than the community,” Ed Henderson said. “The festival is about the blues, it’s about music, it’s about culture, it’s about history and I think that by having the festival it helps to expose people to that culture and to that history, but also to the significant role that African-Americans have played in Falls Church.”
Nikki Henderson added: “When we made the decision to reinvent the street festival into a blues festival, we had a bigger goal in mind. The bigger goal was to make Falls Church a destination, a weekend destination that would draw people from all across the region and nation to Falls Church for the weekend. It’s an economic driver. Most people don’t realise that. That the arts really are an economic driver.”