Residents of the Hybla Valley and Mount Vernon neighborhoods will have a chance to explore new research revealing the history and impact of racially restrictive deed covenants in their communities.
Later this month, Krystyn Moon, a professor of History and American Studies at the University of Mary Washington, will explain how certain racial, national, and religious groups were historically barred from buying homes in subdivisions along the Richmond Highway corridor, due to explicit restrictions written into property deeds.
“In some places, it’s just like one lot; that’s not really the case here, particularly with Hybla Valley,” Moon told FFXnow. “We’re talking about 178 lots with this restriction, so it’s a sizable amount of acreage.”
The presentation will be held at 7 p.m. on Aug. 27 in the first-floor meeting room of Sherwood Hall Library (2501 Sherwood Hall Lane). The event is free and open to the public, with Spanish interpretation available and light refreshments provided.
Moon, who has been mapping these historical restrictions across the county, published a detailed interactive map online in May with several colleagues showing the prevalence of racially restrictive covenants across the Northern Virginia region.
Distinct from redlining, where banks and insurance companies systematically deny services to residents in certain areas based on race or ethnicity, restrictive covenants are explicit legal agreements prohibiting the ownership, lease, or use of property, typically based on race.
The researchers constructed the maps using public land records from 1900 to 1968 to help people visually trace the impact of these policies. Areas shaded in orange mark locations where racial covenants have been confirmed, starkly illustrating the geographical extent of segregation.
Since the “Documenting Exclusion” site went live in May, Moon says she has identified another 8,000 land parcels where restrictions were implemented, particularly in the Mount Vernon and Falls Church areas. That brings the total to more than 22,000 parcels in Fairfax County with racial covenants.
Although there is no single explanation for the prevalence of racial covenants in these areas, Moon says the discriminatory practices generally emerged when Fairfax County started to urbanize in the early to mid-20th century.
“It is tied to the moment when suburbanization becomes a thing in those parts of the county, and because this is considered common practice by that time, developers embrace it,” she said.
According to Moon, developers routinely employed racial restrictions to preserve property values and enforce community segregation during this period, essentially creating a “figurative wall” to prevent the expansion of Black neighborhoods like the historic Gum Springs community.
Moon suggested the high concentration of racial covenants in specific areas, such as Falls Church and Mount Vernon, is likely due to their proximity to Arlington and Alexandria, where early suburban development occurred.
“What we see is the Falls Church…and the Mount Vernon magisterial districts have the highest percentage of acres with racial restrictions of some kind, and because this [research] is a work in progress, those percentages will probably go up, not down,” Moon said.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved funding in 2020 for a study to preserve Gum Springs’s history. The study is meant to identify significant historical themes and structures, gather oral histories, and formulate preservation strategies.
In May, a committee consisting of county officials and community members convened a town hall to gather feedback from residents.
While her research is independent of that study, Moon says she has been in contact with county officials and members of the Gum Springs Historical Society, South County Task Force, Fairfax NAACP and Mount Vernon Regional Historical Society to discuss the implications of her findings.
“I think the community is definitely invested,” she said.
