Child of Lee Highway

My family moved to Northern Virginia from upstate New York when I was two years old. We lived in Falls Church (Fairfax County) and then Falls Church City. Both homes we lived in were a stone's throw from Lee Highway. Lee is a very common name, so I didn't think much about it when I was very young. As I got older and started learning about the Civil War in school, I realized the road was named after THAT Lee. And I wondered why. How could that be justified? After high school, I went to college in Connecticut. Though I got in to a school in VA, I knew I did not want to go to college in VA. I wanted to get out because my state showed me at many turns that it valued the Confederacy, and I did not feel safe in a state like that, no matter how awesome and diverse northern VA might be. That was 27 years ago. Northern VA is even more diverse now. The current citizens of Northern VA deserve more than streets named after Confederate leaders, soldiers, or anything related to the days of chattle slavery. It's time for Fairfax to catch up and do better.

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On July 12, 2022, City Council voted to change the names of 14 streets as recommended by the Stakeholder Advisory Group. Watch the meeting.