Arlington Historical Society Presents

By the time she was 23, Arlington's Joan Mulholland had participated in more than fifty sit-ins and protests. She was a Freedom Rider, a participant in the near riotous Jackson, Mississippi Woolworth Sit-in, and helped plan and organize the March on Washington in 1963. On a local level, she was part of the first Arlington sit-ins, which integrated lunch counters across northern Virginia.

Over the past several decades, Arlington's Columbia Pike corridor has grown into one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the nation, which makes it a fascinating subject for study. But how do you capture the essence of a community? It's a big question and one that Lloyd Wolf and his collaborators on the Columbia Pike Documentary Project has been trying to answer since 2007.

"The Good Gray Poet" Walt Whitman first came to Washington, D.C. in 1862 after the battle of Fredericksburg during the Civil War. He spent the rest of the war serving convalescing soldiers in the city's many military hospitals and remained in Washington until 1873, working as a Federal clerk. This decade was a formative period of the poet's career during which he gained international attention.

Sue Eisenfeld, author of Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal discusses the creation of Shenandoah National Park, which involved displacing thousands of longtime residents from Virginia's Blue Ridge mountains.

When World War I broke out in Europe, Arlington's John Lyon jumped into action, traveling to France to serve as an ambulance driver. Later, when the United States entered the war, he served in the 29th Infantry Division during the bloody Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Just three weeks before the Armistice that ended the war, Lyon was killed while aiding a wounded comrade on the battlefield.