While other places in the US are increasingly censoring how they tell their multicultural histories to travellers, one community is highlighting them.
On a warm late-summer afternoon, just across the Potomac River from Washington DC's marble monuments, I stood with an exuberant crowd of residents, civic leaders and history enthusiasts in Arlington, Virginia. A roar of applause rang out as two small bronze markers were unveiled in the pavement in front of a modest home, their surfaces etched with names and dates.
The small plaques may look unassuming, but these "stumbling stones" carry immense weight: they honour Killemacse and Con, two African Americans enslaved in the mid-1700s on farmland now belonging to one of the most well-known suburbs of the nation's capital, a place home to Arlington National Cemetery, The Pentagon and the Iwo Jima Memorial.
"[Back then,] this land was virgin forest," said Jessica Kaplan, one of the Arlington Historical Society (AHS) board member leading the effort. "As enslaved individuals, they had to clear the land with their own hands. They ploughed the soil and planted crops. They built their own quarters and silos to keep the corn."
Her words capture the heart of a growing movement to reveal the largely unknown history of the area's dark past. Known as Memorializing the Enslaved in Arlington, the initiative is a collaboration between the Arlington Historical Society and the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington and aims to commemorate the names and lives of those long erased from the area's historical narrative. The timing of the project is also telling: while other places around the US are increasingly censoring how they tell their multicultural histories to travellers, Arlington is highlighting them.
The stones are easy to miss if you're not looking for them, but their quiet power lies in their smallness. You don't need to go to a museum or read a textbook to learn about the past – you simply "stumble" upon them randomly on your walks around town. An ever-expanding map now threads through Arlington's neighbourhoods, each one part of a countywide effort to locate, document and honour the thousands of people once enslaved here. In the process, the initiative is turning public spaces into a site of remembrance.
The idea for the project began about four years ago, when Arlington resident Tim Aiken read a Washington Post article about Germany's Stolpersteine – small plaques placed in the pavement in front of the final homes of Holocaust victims. "[The author] suggested the US should do something similar for enslaved and Native Americans," Aiken recalled. "The idea stuck with me."
Aiken brought the concept to the AHS, whose board members immediately saw its potential. They soon contacted Dr Scott Taylor, president of the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington, and the partnership was born. What began as one person's idea soon evolved into a community-wide project. Kaplan, an archivist, assembled a team to begin investigating the history of enslavement in Arlington. "I had no idea what a deep dive it was going to be," she said.
As with many places in the US South where slavery existed, enslaved people were rarely listed by name. Instead, most records only identified the enslaver, which makes uncovering the histories of those kept in bondage especially difficult.
"The work has been painstaking," Kaplan added. "We had to start with the enslavers, using census data. Then we combed through probate record – inventories, estate accounts, wills. We scoured newspapers for runaway ads, anything that might yield a name."
To date, Kaplan's team has identified more than 1,150 individuals, and the database continues to grow. As these archival discoveries take form in Arlington's sidewalks, the project has become a deeply communal undertaking. Local high school students help design and create the markers, county staff manage permits and logistics and while historians try to determine where these individuals once lived so they can place the stones on the pavement as close to their historic residences as possible.
To date, 31 stumbling stones have been installed at 14 sites (with more coming in 2026 and beyond), creating what is, in effect, a walking trail of memory through everyday neighbourhoods.
"I hope when people see the plaques, they'll think about those individuals and remember that we're still living off their labour," Taylor said. "You're talking about free labour, sun up to sun down. That's a huge contribution to this county."
The first stones were placed in October 2023 at the historic Ball-Sellers House, the county's oldest surviving dwelling, to remember Nancy, who was born around 1775 and died sometime between 1831 and 1840, and two unnamed men enslaved on the farm by the Carlin family in the 1800s.
In March 2025, three plaques were installed in the Yorktown neighbourhood to honour Margaret Hyson and her children, George and Charlotte. Born around 1825 to enslaved parents, Margaret later appeared in census records as the property of William and Catherine Minor. Though she married a free Black man, Thornton Hyson, in 1850, neither she nor their children were freed until the end of the US Civil War.
Several Hyson descendants attended the ceremony near Harrison Street and Little Falls Road, including Margaret's great-great-great-granddaughter Nadia Conyers, who reflected on how her ancestors helped build Arlington without reward or recognition. "When Nadia spoke," Taylor recalled, "you could feel generations in the air. It was as if the ancestors were standing with us, saying, 'Finally, someone called our names.'"
