Arlington County Board members on Feb. 27 acted to clean up an unexpected vestige of the Civil War they thought already was gone forever.
Having won Commonwealth Transportation Board approval in 2019 to have Jefferson Davis Highway renamed Richmond Highway, and having used General Assembly authorization in 2021 to rename Lee Highway as Langston Boulevard, you’d think all would have been taken care of.
Apparently not – “an alert resident” noted that while the names have been changed, many portions of the county code still contain outdated references to those two civilian and military leaders of the Confederacy.
In response, County Board members at their monthly meeting adopted a resolution directing the clerk to the board to scour the code and remove all outdated references to the two roadways at the administative level.
“Our attorney has advised us this will cover it,” County Board Chairman Libby Garvey said, saying the resolution empowered staff to “do what we always intended.”
“As we find these errors we can fix them” without coming to the County Board every time, Garvey said.
While renaming U.S. Route 1 as “Richmond Highway” is relatively self-explanatory, the change of U.S. Route 29 to “Langston Boulevard” requires some elucidation.
It was renamed to honor John M. Langston, a Republican who in the late 19th century briefly served as the first Virginian of color in Congress from downstate Virginia and also was president of what is now Virginia State University and founding dean of the Howard University school of law.
While Langston had no direct ties to what would become Arlington, the community organization in once-segregated communities of Halls Hill and High View Park has long been known as the John M. Langston Civic Association. Since U.S. Route 29 runs through the communities (now effectively merged into one), it was deemed an appropriate name.
