For the first time ever, the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution and proclamation recognizing February as Black History Month. The board adopted the resolution at the beginning of its Feb. 20 board meeting.
While the county's schools, organizations and residents have celebrated Black History Month in February, there has never been official recognition of the month-long celebration.
"It was a very surprising fact that this board had never passed [a resolution]," Supervisor Lori Waters (R-Broad Run) said. "I hope whoever is on the board next year will continue to pass this. We want to recognize those who came before us."
Reginald A. Early, president of the county's chapter of the NAACP, read the resolution into the record. Included were the facts that the first African populated Loudoun in 1709 and between that year and the early 1730s enslaved Africans made up more than half of the county's population. The resolution also acknowledged the founding of Loudoun's NAACP chapter in 1940, the integration of schools in 1962 by 12 black students and the founding of the Woodson Mission, the county's first black church, in 1868. Today that same church is known as the Oak Grove Baptist Church.