African American life in Falls Church predates the 1700s, and enslaved and free African Americans lived, worked, struggled, and prospered there for generations before the Civil War. The Tinner Hill community began right after the Civil War when Charles and Elizabeth Tinner purchased land and divided it among their nine children. As outstanding craftsmen and highly skilled stonemasons in the 19th century, the Tinners created a solid and thriving community that continues today, with a neighborhood of vernacular homes from the late 19th and early 20th centuries owned and occupied primarily by Tinner descendants. In 1915, in 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 (NAACP), 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 residential segregation ordinances 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, as local leaders and their allies went on to oppose segregation laws in Virginia and seek equal rights and opportunities for all people.
