NOVA Parks News

NOVA Parks, the Virginia NAACP and the Fairfax County NAACP commemorated Black History Month, Transit Equity Day and an inspiring story of Civil Rights struggles in 1944. 

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The event featured the unveiling of a new permanent interpretive sign about four women from Howard University who challenged Virginia’s Jim Crow laws 11 years before Rosa Parks’ pivotal role in the civil rights movement and 81 years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. 

On Sunday May 14, 1944, Caroline Ware, constitutional history and social science professor at Howard University, hosted a picnic for friends and several of her students at her home near Vienna, Virginia. Fondly called “The Farm” by Ware and her husband, the land would be donated by the couple to NOVA Parks in 1980. It is now Meadowlark Botanical Gardens. 

Following the picnic, Ware drove 8 of the students to a nearby bus stop for their return trip to Howard University in Washington, DC. When the students boarded the bus, they sat in front seats. The driver promptly pointed to a sign saying that Black riders had to sit in the rear—a Virginia law. When the students refused to move, he stopped the bus and called the police. Before the police arrived, the four freshmen moved to the rear seats, but the four juniors and seniors remained in front. When the police told them to move or be arrested, they refused. 

After the women were arrested, Ware arranged for legal counsel for the students with the NAACP, raised their bail and offered The Farm as surety. Their NAACP Attorney argued that, because the bus would be crossing a state line between Virginia and DC, interstate law would apply since there was no federal law requiring Black residents to sit at the rear of a bus, but the argument was not successful. On the way back from appealing their case with the Fairfax County Circuit Court, Ware drove the women past the Lincoln Memorial as they proclaimed “Abe, here we are, still at it!” 

Before their case was appealed at the state level, the Fairfax Commonwealth Attorney dropped all charges against the women. A year later a similar case in Virginia reached the State Supreme Court and the Jim Crow transportation law no longer applied to buses coming into or out of Virginia. 

Transit Equity Day recognizes Rosa Parks’ role in the Civil Rights Movement when she protested racial segregation by refusing to surrender her seat to a white person on a Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955. Her actions led to a 381-day bus boycott campaign in Montgomery and the United States Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional. Transit Equity Day celebrates Rosa Parks’ birthday. 

Visit novaparks.com/BlackHistoryMonth for more information. 

*The ceremony took place on Wednesday, February 5 at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, 9750 Meadowlark Gardens Ct, Vienna, VA 22182.

Event participants included NAACP leaders Cozy Bailey, Virginia State Conference President; Karen Campblin, Former Fairfax County Branch President and Chair of the State Environment and Criminal Justice Committee; and Jasmine Carr, Granddaughter of Rosa Parks and Fairfax Branch Membership Chair. From the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Chairman Jeff McKay and Hunter Mill Supervisor Walter Alcorn participated. Faith leaders Dr. Arnett Waters from Heritage Fellowship Church in Reston and Dr. Vernon Walton from First Baptist Church in Vienna provided reflections. 

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About NOVA Parks 
Founded in 1959, NOVA Parks (Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority) represents three counties and three cities -- Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, the City of Alexandria, the City of Falls Church, and the City of Fairfax. The regional agency manages over 12,000 acres of parks and recreational facilities, including water parks, golf courses, boat launches, and a high adventure ropes course. 

About Fairfax County NAACP 
The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination. Founded on February 12, 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. The Fairfax County Branch of the NAACP began meeting in 1918 and was chartered in 1944. To learn more, please visit www.fairfaxnaacp.org.