Preservation Efforts
The Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation has three, close-in-proximity properties that, remarkably, survive from the post-Civil War period. All properties are intimately tied to the history of Falls Church and to the struggles of African Americans to attain their rights and freedoms, from the period of Jim Crow through the Civil Rights Movement.
The existence of the properties presents the City of Falls Church and, in fact, the state and the nation, with a rare opportunity a) to preserve vernacular places not grand in stature but immensely important in the evolution of this freedom-based democracy, b) to acknowledge the importance of these places by making their presence central to the City’s development projects. (At present, these commercial and residential planned developments are visibly near the African American sites.)
307 S. Maple Ave.
Once the home of Joseph Tinner and Mary Tinner. Mr. Tinner was a master craftsman and stonemason, This site is at present vacant land. Prior to the Civil War, this site was also home to enslaved people who worked on the Dulany Plantation.
African American families have lived on this site through the eras of slavery, emancipation, Jim Crow, segregation, and desegregation. It is on this site, and inside the home that once existed, that African American residents of Falls Church, organized by Dr. E. B. Henderson, met in 1915 to fight a segregation law that would have required African Americans to live in a small portion of the town of Falls Church.
The house at this location was a Sears home built by Dr. E. B. Henderson and wife Mary Ellen Henderson, leaders of the African American community in Falls Church. Dr. Henderson was instrumental in fighting the segregation ordinance. He also fought many other battles for civil rights, was well-known as an editorial writer, and introduced black basketball in 1904. Mary Ellen Henderson, E.B.’s wife, was an educator, taught and ran the segregated school in Falls Church. After a twenty nine year battle, she was responsible for the construction of the first new school in the area for blacks. The Henderson home, with its surrounding land, survives and is occupied by Dr. and Mrs. Henderson’s grandson, Edwin B. Henderson, II, and his wife, Nikki Graves Henderson.