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Purcellville’s black community developed on the south side of the town along G Street, known to most residents as “the Color Line.” After the Civil War, a Quaker family named Birdsall sold small lots of land there to Freedmen from Loudoun County and beyond. Early black family names included Brown, Cook, Dade, Furr, Lee, Johnson, Simms, and Stewart. After someone bought a lot, the community organized a house building, which often took place on weekends. Many members had construction expertise—some were engaged in building suburban Washington, D.C. The community included an active Elks Lodge. In 1910, the Loudoun County Emancipation Association (founded in Hamilton) bought ten acres on the corner of A and 20th Streets and established Lincoln Park. They built a tabernacle, organized Emancipation Day Celebrations, and hosted baseball games, Horse and Colt Shows, Field Day, ministers’ conventions, and a host of other events. At first, black Purcellville residents walked two miles to the Quaker village of Lincoln for school and church. In 1919 residents formed a Willing Workers Club that borrowed money, purchased land, and built a school. They established a library there, too, since they were banned from the “public” library founded in town by Clarence Robey. In 1942, residents constructed Grace Annex Methodist Church. In 1948, Loudoun County built the larger brick Carver Elementary School that educated black students in the area through the seventh grade. Long used only for storage after the public schools were fully integrated in 1968, the beloved school reopened as a senior center in early 2007.
Billy Pierce (1890-1933)
In the early twentieth century there was little opportunity in Virginia for a man of color as talented and ambitious as Billy Pierce. Educated at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Howard University in Washington, D.C., he also served in the Army during World War I. Pierce then worked as a newspaper editor in Washington and Chicago, but his real love was the arts. He performed for a time, then opened the Broadway Dance Studio in New York City. He started small but soon attracted noted white clients such as Fred and Adele Astaire, and choreographed dances for Broadway shows. Trade magazines credited him with dances such as the Charleston and Black Bottom that became popular worldwide. They were part of the African American cultural flowering known as the Harlem Renaissance. In the early 1930s Pierce took a show of African American dance to European cities including London, Paris, and Rome. Despite his fame he held fondly to his roots. On the wall of his New York dance studio, he kept a large tinted photograph of his parents standing in front of their Purcellville home. He and his young family returned for an extended visit each summer. In 1929, a newspaperman reported that Pierce “comes back to Virginia annually to see his aged mother, and never fails to write down the steps observable in the breakdowns and barn dances of the Old Dominion.” He died suddenly at the age of forty-three and returned home one last time to a large funeral service with memorials and visitors from afar. He was buried in his church’s cemetery in Lincoln.
Interest-African American, loudoun County, Virginia, >African-American, >AF Loudoun County
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