Springdale Neighborhood

Here follows an excerpt from the "Annandale Today" newspaper:

A Bailey’s Xroads resident is documenting the history of a vibrant Black community
July 12, 2023

The Springdale neighborhood in Bailey’s Crossroads has long been the center of a flourishing Black community.

But now, the history of that community is in danger of being lost as younger generations have moved out, McMansions replaced many of the smaller houses, and new developments are encroaching on the neighborhood. Springdale is centered around Lacy Boulevard, Magnolia Lane, and Munson Road.

Julius Smith, who grew up in the neighborhood, is working on documenting that history for a nonprofit he founded called the Black American Registry of Bailey’s Crossroads. A celebration next Saturday, July 15, at the Bailey’s Community Center, 4-10 p.m., marks the first anniversary of that project.

Family stories

Smith is putting together genealogical records and mapping the addresses of the Black families who lived there. The community once had about 2,000 Black families, he says; now only 43 remain.

He is also interviewing the oldest residents and documenting their stories about life in Bailey’s Crossroads – the good times and the challenges during the Jim Crow era.

The Springdale community was originally settled by Blacks fleeing the South for jobs in Washington, D.C.

Many of them settled in Freedom City established during the Lincoln Administration to house federal workers. In the early 1940s, Freedom City was torn down to make way for construction of the Pentagon.

Both Julius Smith and Dwight Somers had ancestors who were displaced from Freedom City and moved to Bailey’s Crossroads.

A close-knit community

Somers, who was born in 1948, recalls growing up in a community where everyone looked out for one another. “If I got in trouble in school, by the time I got home, everyone knew what I did,” he says

People used to collect water from a spring on Munson Road in the 1950s before homes had running water. The community had outhouses until the 1960s

Somers says there was a big enough swimming hole in Holmes Run for kids to swim and swing from ropes. His grandfather had one of the first TVs – a big cabinet with a tiny screen – and everyone used to come over and watch it.

All the ladies did laundry and hang the clothes outside to dry on the same day, Somers says, and that’s when the gossip would spread from home to home. Everyone had chickens, pigs, and a vegetable garden. He remembers catching herring in Holmes Run and the remnants of a grist mill across from the dam.

Somers’ favorite season was fall, when it was hog-killing time for the men and canning time for the women. The women put up everything, including corn, peas, string beans, and peaches.

“We never went hungry,” Somers recalls. If someone was sick or facing hard times, neighbors would bring over an “extra” cured ham or some canned preserves saying they made too much.

“We were all one big family here in Bailey’s Crossroads,” he says.

“A lot of the ladies did day work, taking in laundry, cleaning houses, and babysitting,” Smith adds.

Smith recalls a formidable matriarch, Gladys Norris. All she had to do was walk down the street and men who were brawling or playing craps would stop until she passed by.

Margaret Fields was a community activist who got the county to install traffic signals and improve the roads.

Somers’ great-grandfather worked on construction at the White House, and Dwight Somers returned to the White House as an official photographer for the U.S. Information Agency. He photographed every president from Nixon to Obama and traveled abroad on Air Force One to take photos of foreign dignitaries.

People never locked their doors in Springdale, added Robert Wright, who moved to the neighborhood from Lincolnia when he was 8.

Wright’s family lived in a boarding house on Lacy Boulevard that had been the first Black elementary school in Bailey’s Crossroads. The building is now a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Many firsts

Wright went to segregated schools – James Lee Elementary School and Luther Jackson High School. After he graduated in 1960, he became one of the first Black students at Harvard, a civil rights activist, and one of the first Black attorneys in Fairfax County.

Julius Smith went to the segregated Lillian Carey Elementary School on Summers Lane, which is now the site of the Bailey’s Community Center.

That was the first community center in Fairfax County. It opened in 1972 after Bailey’s Crossroads youths began advocating for a community center in 1966, Smith says.

“This center changed a lot of people’s lives,” he says. Basketball, baseball, and mentors helped turn kids away from drugs and crime.

Sports were important in the community. Smith’s father was on the Quick Steps baseball team, which won the Negro League championship three times. Somers also played baseball, winning six championships with the Jedi team.

Police harassment was one of the biggest challenges for Blacks in Bailey’s Crossroads. Officers looking for someone would come in with guns drawn, Smith says. When the police chief refused to meet with residents, residents turned to Sheriff James Swinson, who was much more helpful, so the community supported his re-election campaign.

When Harold Miller was the Mason District supervisor in the 1960s, he appointed Smith to the Fairfax Community Action Program, which brought issues to the Board of Supervisors. And in 1978, Smith was the first Black to serve on the county’s commission on youth.

Wright served on the Fairfax County Planning Commission and helped start the county’s first Social Seniors group.

A big family reunion

Smith lived in Vienna for 20 years but after retiring – he worked as a carpenter, truck driver, payroll logistics specialist, and a courier for Mercedes-Benz of Alexandria – he moved back to Bailey’s Crossroads.

Even people who left decades ago still have strong feelings about the neighborhood. Hundreds of former residents come back for the annual Bailey’s Crossroads Family Reunion on the second Saturday in September.

The reunion features gospel music, food, live bands, a moon bounce and other kids’ activities, and a basketball game, says the event organizer Mirenda Fields, chair of the advisory committee for the Bailey’s Community Center. She hosts fish fries and other events throughout the year to raise funds for the reunion.

While the community has become more prosperous, Smith misses the times when everyone knew and helped one another.

“The new people don’t see themselves as part of the Black community,” he says. And that’s why he’s compiling a history of Bailey’s Crossroads and the people who made their home here.

“There is not a better place to raise a family in the United States,” Smith says. “This place has a special meaning for us.”


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Annandale Today" newspaper:

A local Black community honors its history
July 20, 2023

More than a hundred current and former residents of Springdale came to the first-anniversary celebration of the Black American Registry of Bailey’s Crossroads to honor the people who made lasting contributions to the community.

The event, in the Bailey’s Community Center on July 15, featured an awards ceremony, photo displays, and an opportunity for people to reconnect with one another, share memories, and honor those who passed.

Preserving the past

The goal of the Black American Registry project is to identify the address of every Black family who lived in the Springdale neighborhood in Bailey’s Crossroads and document the history of a thriving tight-knit Black community threatened by gentrification.

Springdale is concentrated in the area around Lacey Boulevard, Magnolia Lane, Arnet Street, Munson Road, and Summers Lane. Many of the original houses have been replaced by McMansions.

“We want to remember those who came before us,” said Alyce Pope, a member of the Black American Registry of Bailey’s Crossroads Committee.

“This was a community where we all looked out for each other,” Pope said. “If somebody was hungry, somebody fed them, if somebody was lonely, somebody comforted them.”

She told the audience: “You have a responsibility to make sure our legacy is not lost.”

Julius “Poochie” Smith, the founder of the Bailey’s Crossroads registry project, presented the Longevity Award to Ruth Roberts, age 104, “the matriarch of our community.”

Ruth Roberts accepted the award surrounded by family members. She and her husband moved to Bailey’s Crossroads in 1946.

She took good care of her seven children, serving three meals a day, and doing laundry in a tub with a scrub board before they got a washing machine, her daughter recalled. She served on several committees at the Warner Baptist Church on Lacy Boulevard and later worked at the Higher Horizons Head Start center.

Community advocates

Pope presented the Minnie Marie Hungerford Peyton Historical Award to Willie and Margaret Coleman. Willie Coleman is president of the Springdale Civic Association. The Colemans have deep roots in the community and they make sure public officials understand the issues affecting Springdale residents, Pope said.

Minnie Peyton was a matriarch of the community who founded five churches, including Warner Baptist and Holy Scripture Church of Christ and donated land to Fairfax County for a school. Before the county was forced to integrate its schools, Black children from Bailey’s Crossroads had to go to Manassas to get an education, Pope said.

Mary Anne Cornish, the director of the Higher Horizons Head Start program, was honored with the Lillian Carey Education Award. Cornish recently retired after working at Higher Horizons for 46 years.

Lillian Carey was an itinerant teacher who served children in Arlington, Manassas, and Bailey’s Crossroads and later became the principal of the Bailey’s School, a two-room schoolhouse for Blacks.

Lillian Carey Elementary School served the Black community in Bailey’s Crossroads from 1956 to 1965. The building was later remodeled and repurposed as the Bailey’s Community Center.

The George Marshall Civic Award was presented to the Bailey’s Crossroads Reunion Committee. The committee organizes a huge family reunion every year that draws current and former residents, some of whom travel long distances for the event. The next one is Sept. 9.

Elder George Marshall was responsible for bringing sewers and water to the community and getting Lacy Boulevard paved, said Robert Wright, a member of the Black American Registry Committee.

As a religious leader, “he started from scratch,” Wright said. He preached in a tent on a baseball field, then relocated to an underground church in a building with a top story destroyed in a storm.

Marshall then established the Holy Scripture Church of Christ on Lacy Boulevard, where he served as pastor for 50 years. He died in November 2022.

Marshall was more than a religious leader, Wright said. He fought for civil rights, built several houses in Bailey’s Crossroads, and advocated for community improvements. He founded a program called HELP (Help Every Living Person) to provide free food and other assistance for those in need.

Smith presented the Rosa Wood Recreation Award to Juanita and Bertram White. The couple, married for 67 years, started a youth group and a dance team. In 1959, their dance team was the first Black group to appear on the Milt Grant Show, a local television program with a teen dance party format.

The Milton Sheppard Christian Leadership Award went to Roger and Patricia Hall. The Halls founded Peace and Love Ministries, which is dedicated to Christian values and support for the community.

Milton Sheppard, now deceased, was the pastor at Warner Baptist Church on Lacy Boulevard and Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church on Lincolnia Road.

The Bailey’s Crossroads Athletics Award went to the Blue Jays and White Sox youth baseball teams. The award was presented in honor of the 1972 Pirates baseball team, a Little League Championship winner.

Genealogical research

Annette Russell, the genealogist who is researching the neighborhood for the Bailey’s Crossroads registry project, has so far compiled information on 6,374 people who lived in Springdale.

Russell reviewed records going back to 1870, including property deeds, birth and death certificates, and military records. She is interviewing current and past residents and creating a database to be published online along with photos and family trees.

Along the way, she unearthed some interesting facts. For example, Lacy Boulevard was named for Winfield Scott Lacey (1855-1947), a White man who had a farm on Columbia Pike.

Russell lived in the Syphax Apartments in Springdale (now called Oakview Gardens) from age 6 to 17. The complex was named for Maria Syphax, a former slave who gave the land to her children, who later developed the apartments.

“People here are so very friendly,” said Barbara Malloy, a longtime resident of Oakview Gardens. “Everyone got along. Everyone looked out for everyone’s kids.”

Several people at the event had fond memories of “Sugar Lump,” a sweet lady who was a pillar of the community. Russell said Sugar Lump’s real name was Elizabeth Hudson Hall. She got her nickname because when she was young she would always take sugar lumps from the table.

Harrietta Fields said all the kids used to hang out at Minnie Peyton’s on Munson Road. Even though Fields moved to Richmond Highway in the early 1970s and now lives in Emporia, Va., she still regularly comes back to the old neighborhood for birthdays, holidays, and cookouts.

In a transient county, where many people don’t know their neighbors, Springdale was the place where everyone seemed like family – whether they were actually related or not – and that’s the community spirit the registry project is hoping to preserve.


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Here follows an excerpt from the FFXNow newspaper:

Bailey’s Community Center may get new name to honor matriarch of historic Black community
By Matt Blitz
Published September 13, 2023 at 11:30AM

Fairfax County is considering renaming its community center in Bailey’s Crossroads after a mid-20th-century pillar of the Black community.

At a Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday (Tuesday), its first since July, retiring Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross proposed looking into renaming the decades-old Bailey’s Community Center after Minnie Peyton.

Peyton was the well-known matriarch of Springdale, a historically Black community in Bailey’s Crossroads that originated as a home to freedmen after the Civil War.

Peyton founded several local churches and donated land to the county, specifically for an elementary school for Black students. When the school was completed in 1956, per county tax records, Fairfax County was still segregating Black and white students.

Today, the land once occupied by the school is the site of Bailey’s Community Center and Higher Horizons Head Start Program, an early education facility founded in 1963.

Naming the community center after Peyton would be a fitting acknowledgment of her role in the area’s history, Gross said in a board matter.

The Springdale community in Bailey’s Crossroads had its beginnings as home to freedmen following the Civil War, and has nurtured hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families in the last century-and-a-half. As with many traditional Black communities, the residents erected a church and built a small elementary school to educate their children, but the neighborhood received few local services – no paved roads, no sidewalks, no public drinking water or wastewater infrastructure. There is a growing desire in the community to re-name the community center to honor Minnie Peyton and reflect its historic roots.

While advocating for the change, Gross acknowledged that “more research needs to be done” and requested that the Fairfax County History Commission “verify available documentation” before the switch.

Gross gave the commission a deadline of next summer to report its findings.

The Board of Supervisors approved the request unanimously, though no date or timeline was given on when the community center’s name might actually change.

This isn’t the only county community center to undergo a name change recently. In July, the Board officially approved renaming the Providence Community Center as the Jim Scott Community Center.

Scott was a former supervisor and represented the county in the Virginia House of Delegates for over two decades. He was most known for advocating for the state’s “motor voter” law, which allowed people to register to vote at DMVs, employment centers, and welfare offices. He died in 2017.

A renaming ceremony for the community center in Oakton will be held on Sept. 30.


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Here follows an excerpt from a press release published on the Fairfax County website:

Bailey’s Community Center Renamed in Honor of Community Leader Minnie H. Peyton
September 16, 2024

On Saturday, Sep. 14, 2024, county leaders joined community members to celebrate renaming Bailey’s Community Center as the Minnie H. Peyton Community Center at Bailey’s.

The new name honors Minnie Peyton (1889-1985), a pillar of Springdale, a historically Black community in Bailey’s Crossroads that originated as a home to freedmen since the Civil War. In 1935, Minnie Peyton and her sister, Florence, purchased five acres of land in Bailey’s Crossroads. They sold the land to the Fairfax County School Board in 1954. In 1956, Lillian Carey Elementary School, which served Black students, opened on the sisters’ former land. The former school site is now a part of the community center.

In September 2023, former Mason Supervisor Penny Gross introduced a Board Matter to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to explore the name change. That was followed by a community engagement meeting in June 2024 and online public feedback survey from June 26 – July 11, 2024.

At the request of current Mason Supervisor Andres Jimenez, the Board approved the renaming at its meeting on July 16, 2024. For more information on the engagement process, visit Bailey's Community Center Renaming.

The Minnie H. Peyton Community Center at Bailey’s is located at 5920 Summers Lane in Falls Church, VA. It is a multipurpose facility for all ages and abilities. The center’s features include a senior program, gymnasium, computer clubhouse, weight and exercise rooms, outdoor tennis and basketball courts, a baseball diamond, playground and more.