Arlington: An African American History

The hallowed ground known today as Arlington National Cemetery bears witness to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice to protect the nation’s ideals of freedom and justice for all. But another history lies beneath the landscape—an African American freedom struggle that has been erased from the landscape. Before the Civil War, enslaved African Americans labored, escaped, raised families, and died at Arlington on a plantation founded by George Washington Parke Custis and inherited by the wife...