African American life in Falls Church predates the 1700s, and for generations before the Civil War enslaved and free African Americans lived, worked, struggled, and prospered there. The Tinner Hill community began right after the Civil War when Charles and Elizabeth Tinner purchased land and divided it among their ten children, and the Tinners, outstanding craftsmen and highly skilled stonemasons in the 19th century, built a solid and thriving community that continues today. The neighborhood remains a noteworthy collection of vernacular homes dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, still owned and occupied primarily by Tinner descendants. In 1915, at the home of Joseph and Mary Tinner, nine African American men met to plan how to defeat a proposed ordinance that would segregate Falls Church by forcing all African American families to live in a small designated area of town. Joined by other male and female members of the black community, they pooled their resources, hired lawyers, filed a lawsuit, petitioned the National Advancement of Colored People, newly founded in 1909, to become a chapter, and as the Colored Citizens Protective League blocked the town from enacting the legislation. In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that residential segregation ordinances were unconstitutional, and by 1918 the Falls Church group was a full-fledged chapter of the NAACP that continued to fight successfully for equality in education, equal access to public services, and voter participation in Northern Virginia. These local leaders and those who joined them went on to fight segregation laws in Virginia and to pursue equal rights and opportunities for all people.
