Mount Vernon — At the annual Gum Springs Community Day, a resolution passed by the Board of Supervisors at the request of Supervisor Gerald Hyland (D-Mount Vernon) and a House Joint Resolution passed by the House of Delegates and the Senate, introduced at the request of state Del. Scott Surovell, were read at the community day celebration in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Park on Saturday, June 15.
Both resolutions were presented to the Gum Springs Historical Society and Museum.
Gum Springs is the oldest historically black community in Fairfax County, and traces its origins to freeman West Ford, who permitted 214 acres of land he purchased to become a refuge during the Civil War for freed and runaway slaves.