Heffner Park and its community center grew from decades of advocacy by Takoma Park's African American residents for public recreation facilities of their own. Beginning in 1941, Black residents led by Lee Jordan, president of Takoma Park's Colored Citizens Association, pressed for dedicated public facilities while Montgomery County's earliest recreation facilities remained segregated and parks for Black communities were often substandard and inadequately funded. After M-NCPPC built the Takoma Park Recreation Center for white residents, the City of Takoma Park purchased land on Oswego Avenue for a playground for Black residents, and when the city did not improve the lot, residents cleared the land themselves and installed playground equipment. Takoma Park dedicated the park in August 1952 and named it for Councilmember Herman C. Heffner. Residents gathered there to play and watch baseball, throw horseshoes, and listen to local musicians, remembering it as "the place to go." The city later moved its public works facility from a white-owned neighborhood to Heffner Park despite protests from the Colored Citizens Association and the Black community, and a land swap relocated the park. The community lost its baseball diamond and fields, but in 1959 gained a small, simply built community building that finally gave Black residents a public place of their own. The building also hosted a short-lived Teen Club that gave local Black youth a first opportunity to attend dances, play records, and socialize in public facilities. Herman Claude Heffner was a retired railway postal clerk and a popular civic leader who served on the Takoma Park City Council for 10 years. In the 1940s he supported improvements to the Takoma Park Rosenwald School and in 1947 formally raised the matter of recreation facilities for Black residents, becoming the first elected official to take such action. Lee Jordan first proposed honoring him, and the city named the park for Heffner in 1952 as a community leader admired by people irrespective of race, creed, or color. Lee Jordan was also a major figure in Takoma Park civic life. After playing professional baseball for the Homestead Grays in the segregated Negro League, he returned to the Hill neighborhood and worked as a custodian at Montgomery Blair High School and Takoma Park Junior High. He founded football, baseball, and basketball teams, mentored young players, and welcomed white and Latino athletes onto those teams. His work to integrate youth athletics is considered central to the peaceful racial integration of Takoma Park's public schools.