Arts & Entertainment
Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation Walking Tour Tentatively Scheduled for Late Summer Start
Nikki Graves Henderson plans on unveiling a walking tour of Falls Church, featuring establishments with significant African American history.
After years of historical research and maneuvering, Nikki Graves Henderson and the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation plan to unveil their “Walking Tour” of Falls Church, tentatively scheduled to begin towards the end of the summer.
“In 2005 after they built the Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School, people began to ask who was Mary Ellen Henderson?,” said Henderson. “We wrote a proposal and were funded to create a museum quality traveling exhibit about Mary Ellen Henderson, but we still had questions from people who asked about the local community and that was how the walking tour began.”
The tour starts at the Falls Church, and takes visitors throughout the City of Falls Church with several stops along the way for establishments with significant history regarding the African American population in Falls Church. The James Lee Community Center is one of the many stops on the tour, James Lee was originally opened as a school for black children in Falls Church in the 1950s.
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“The more research that we did, the more we added,” said Henderson. “Now we want to be able to have people go to our website, download the map and take the tour themselves, or they can schedule a guided tour.”
The Tinner Hill president was also thankful to Dr. Elizabeth Morton from Virginia Tech and her grad students for research assistance on putting together the walking tour. She also thanked Dr. Wendy Manuel-Scott of George Mason University for help with the Tinner Hill website.
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The tour stops through the Galloway United Methodist Church and the Second Baptist Church, both of which were founded in what was then considered the City of Falls Church in the 1860s.
“After the town gerrymandered it's borders to exclude the black republican voting home owners, the church, the James Lee Community Center and the homes in the area (up to Rte 50) was considered Fairfax County,” said Henderson via email.
The Tinner Hill foundation has not yet announced a scheduled date to start the availability of the walking tour.
