It was a late-summer walk with my daughter and granddaughter, but it became a history lesson. Yesterday I learned about Hall’s Hill wall, a stark reminder of segregation in Arlington, Virginia. Bazil Hall was a 19th-century plantation owner whose first wife was so abusive to their slaves that one of them killed her. 

Although he was a slaveowner, Hall was also a unionist. He voted against Virginia’s succession, and in 1861, Confederate troops set fire to his home during an attack from an adjacent site. Union troops later occupied the area. 

After the war, Hall sold off his property, some of it to formerly enslaved people. According to the Arlington Historical Society, he didn’t do this because he was nice, but because he wanted to irritate his white neighbors. The Black community that resulted was known as Hall’s Hill.

In the 1930s a wall was erected along the perimeter of the neighborhood to block Black citizens from entering the new subdivision of Woodlawn. It remained mostly intact until 1966, when the county tore most of it down. The vestiges still standing are a sad reminder of life in earlier times.