When Burt and Kathy Lamkin moved to Northern Virginia in 1966, they were only the 13th African-American family to settle in the newly formed community of Reston.
While Fairfax County was still segregated at the time the Lamkins moved into their Wainright Drive home, an address they still call home today, Reston stood out as a progressive beacon of tolerance in a state and region long associated with racial intolerance.
Now a group of national and local activists and educators are working hard to make sure that Reston’s role in the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s is not lost on the community’s younger generations.
As Black History month nears an end, students of all races at South Lakes High School are getting an education in the civil rights movement and the role that their community played in breaking down barriers of race and inequality.
Now in its second year, the Color Line Project is a story-collecting and performance event about the Civil Rights Movement. Last year, the project won a Ford Foundation grant totaling $130,000. John O'Neal is the artistic director and Theresa Holden is the director for the Color Line Project. The two organizers are trying to collect stories from people who experienced the movement, firsthand. During the three-year process, all stories collected are tape-recorded and will eventually be archived at the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.
"Artists use the stories as inspiration to devlop pieces that can then be shared for continuing dialogue," said Holden, an actor, designer and theater teacher, in a statement. "Educators and activists incorporate both the stories themselves and the methodology of story circles in their respective curricula, as new tools."
In each of three communities around the country, Reston, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Flint, Mich., O’Neal and Holden bring together local artists, educators, community activists and students and help them further their understanding of their shared heritage and community through oral histories and story circles. The project encourages people who participated in or were deeply affected by the civil rights movement to share their stories.
In the first year of the program, nearly 130 students from Langston Hughes Middle School were asked to seek out oral histories from Restonians touched by the civil rights movement. Until the end of this month, excerpts from some of the student’s interviews, including the ones with Burt and Kathy Lamkin, are displayed at the Reston Community Center at Hunters Woods. After collecting the stories, the students worked to put what they had learned into a performance, using art, music, dance and drama that they put on at RCC last summer. "The Color Line Project allows students to artistically explore the impact of the civil rights movement through personal experiences," said Leila Gordon, performing arts director for the Reston Community Center, the sponsoring organization. She added that the interdisciplinary project uses arts to "re-engage" young people in their own history and the history of their families, of their region and of their country as it relates to the "single most critical moral shift in history of this country."
"IT’S THE GOAL of the project to reinvigorate the community with the meaning and the values of the civil rights movement in as many different ways as there are individual participants," Gordon added.
Later this week, students from South Lakes High School will participate in the second round of story circles, facilitated by O’Neal and Holden, in an effort to learn more about the civil rights movement by listening and sharing stories. "A certain power is created when we listen to others, when we respect our fellow humans, when we recognize the dignity of all humankind," Holden has said of the story circles. "It is a power that can motivate, foster action and bring about change."
While some of today’s students may not grasp all the complexities and importance of the civil rights movement, they can all understand the basic inequality people of color felt everyday, Gordon said. "Instinctively, high school kids understand the whole idea of ‘in’ and ‘out.’ So even if they don’t understand the magnitude of the struggle for civil rights, they understand the basic, underlying attitudes," she said. "They understand injustice. Ultimately, after hearing story after story, the students start to gain some perspective and they can put some context to their own experiences. They can hopefully learn how to handle similar problems and move forward."
Gordon said she could sense real astonishment on the part of the junior high school students. She was surprised at how many of them, simply did not know or understand the extreme dehumanizing conditions that existed in this country only four decades ago. "Kids, black and white, didn’t know what had happened to their own family members or their neighbors," Gordon said. "Because of the Color Line Project, they do, now."
Lamkin, who participated in last year’s oral history portion of the project, is amazed that so many students graduate without learning the true scope of the movement. "Black or white, most kids today think they have no connection to the civil rights movement," she said. "People do not understand the kinds of sacrifices that people went through, not very long ago. We have to remain vigilant and continue to educate people, even today."
Like Lamkin, Gordon cringes at the notion that this country has come to grips with race and that it no longer needs to look back. "The purpose of this project is to be proactive, not reactive. It is important that we constantly learn from our past mistakes and reinvigorate discussion of our shared histories," Gordon said. "We don’t want to end up back where we were in the '50s and '60s. I don’t think people want to forget, at least I hope they don’t."
Larson agreed, adding, "The tussle over civil liberties and equality of opportunity is not tied to one decade. Nor is the struggle between tolerance and appreciation on the one hand and apprehension and suspicion of the newcomer and the 'other' something that will ever be resolved."
Reston residents must make the effort to understand and appreciate each other, to truly make community in contrast to merely living side by side peacefully," the historian said. "Color Line gives us an opportunity to recall the vision that animated Reston's founding and to discuss how we can carry that vision into the future."
ALONG WITH FLINT and Cincinnati, Reston is one of three communities initially selected to be a part of the project. Because of its origins in the New Town movement, Reston’s selection was not surprising or difficult to understand, organizers said.
"Reston was the first development in any of the states of the former Confederacy to be marketed as an open community. For three years before the Virginia anti-miscegenation laws were struck down in 1967, Reston rented and sold illegally to mixed-race couples," said Reston resident Sarah Larson, the designated historian for the project. "Many of the earliest people who came to live and work in Reston did so because it was diverse — racially, economically, religiously, and age."
The Lamkins were one of those families. "The idea of an open community with apartments, homes, condos all living in cluster type housing, you have to understand, that was way out there for Virginia, at that time. I think the people in Herndon thought we were all Commies or Pinkos, because of our communally-owned land — that was just too much for the locals to handle."
After moving out from San Jose, Ca., the Lamkins originally settled in Southwest Washington, D.C., but within a year, they found themselves looking for better housing and better schools in Northern Virginia. Reston was the only option. "To be honest, we weren’t real keen about moving into Virginia and our black friends in Washing were not very enthusiastic, either," said Lamkin, a Colorado-native. "It was kind of like we were moving out to the hinterlands, but it was the only option. Sure, we were a little leery."
What they found when they arrived in Reston was that nearly all of the new communities residences were not from Virginia. "Everyone was from the northeast or so it seemed, but we were all embraced."
According to Larson, the project will allow a completely new generation to learn about their community’s involvement. "Color Line gives us an opportunity to recall the vision that animated Reston's founding and to discuss how we can carry that vision into the future."