NOVA Parks News
THROWBACK THURSDAY - NOVA PARKS - A REGION OF INCLUSION
Northern Virginia has always been more progressive than the rest of the Commonwealth. Federal employees from other parts of the County helped to create a more open culture. NOVA Parks (Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority) was one of the first regional institutions that helped to define the inclusive culture of Northern Virginia.
In 1968, NOVA Parks was building its first pool at Bull Run Regional Park in Centreville. Many letters arrived at headquarters from some insisting that it needed segregated facilities. At the same time, the “public” pool in Leesburg was being closed instead of opening it to all races. The Byrd political machine that had enforced Jim Crow segregation laws since the 1940s throughout Virginia was in its last years, and the U.S. Supreme Court had just forced Virginia to open all public universities to black students that year.
NOVA Parks pushed forward and opened the largest pool in Virginia, and had it open and integrated from day one.
Segregation in the 1950s and 1960s is one of the reasons Northern Virginia created a regional park system. Park advocates in that era knew that a State Park would be segregated, and that was not what leaders in Northern Virginia wanted. So they created a regional park system to be like a state park system, but not controlled by the Byrd machine. This is one of the reasons why the first State Park in Northern Virginia did not come until 1974.
As one of the first regional institutions, NOVA Parks helped create an identity for Northern Virginia, and it was an identity that embraced cultural and ethnic diversity. The Bull Run Special Events Center in recent years has seen festivals for up to 10,000 people a day for Persians, Punjabi Indian, Bolivian, Korean, Pakistani and many other groups. These events celebrate the rich diversity of our region. At the Tinner Hill Historic Site in Falls Church NOVA Parks has built a site dedicated to an early Civil Rights victory.
NOVA Parks is proud of its role, then and now, in helping to define Northern Virginia as an open and welcoming place for all people.
