Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation’s Henderson Invites Falls Church to Properly 'Celebrate MLK Day’

In northern Virginia, is there any more fitting place to celebrate Martin Luther King Day than the City of Falls Church?
After our interview with the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation’s founder Edwin Henderson II – a pioneering civil rights advocate who not only spurred the once-segregated City of Falls Church into designating the Tinner Hill Historic and Cultural District, but oversaw the recent Tinner Hill Mural Project, and, with his spouse Nikki Henderson, continues to preserve and celebrate the rich Black heritage of the local community – it’s hard to imagine a nearby Virginia location better suited to a joyous celebration of the legacy of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Though MLK Day falls this year on Monday, Jan. 20, the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation has joined with the City of Falls Church, the Social Justice Committee of the City of Falls Church and Vicinity, and the Falls Church Episcopal, to celebrate the legacy of Dr. King this Saturday, Jan. 18, with the Annual Dr. King Day March for Unity & Freedom, with Program.
“This in-person event will feature a march for unity and freedom followed by a program honoring Dr. King's contributions to the civil rights movement,” a press release from the Social Justice committee said. “Don't miss this opportunity to show your support for equality and justice for all.”
The day will feature guest “speakers, music, lunch and a social justice workshop.”

Gathering for making signs and marching will begin at 10:00 a.m. at the Tinner Hill Civil Rights Monument at 510 S. Washington St., and the day’s march and civil rights workshop program will run until 3:00 p.m.
“Following an invocation and remarks at 11 a.m., the march begins at 11:15 a.m. and proceeds east on Washington Street to The Falls Church Episcopal, 115 E. Fairfax St., for a complimentary lunch, speakers and small group discussions until 3:00 p.m.,” the press release said. “The featured speaker is noted civil rights activist Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, who was a Freedom Rider during the summer of 1961 challenging segregated bus travel through the South. Trumpauer Mulholland also took part in a Jackson, Miss., lunchroom counter sit-in protesting segregation and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

“To commemorate Dr. King’s life of service, participants are invited to support the Patrick Henry Family Shelter, 3080 Patrick Henry Drive, Falls Church. In addition to monetary donations, supporters can shop for families here. The donation drive is spearheaded by the Social Justice Committee and the Chi Beta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Interview with Edwin Henderson II, Founder Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation
The first thing to know about Ed Henderson as a civil rights leader is he was born, just like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on “the front lines” of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, “in other words, in the Deep South.”
And Henderson’s family tree and childhood recollections reference so many key figures in the Civil Rights Movement, they could make up a chapter in an American History textbook. For example, Henderson’s aunt was married to the son of Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute.
“I grew up 40 miles from Montgomery, in Tuskegee, Alabama,” Henderson recounted. “E.B. Henderson, my grandfather, moved from [Falls Church] down to Tuskegee in 1965, the last twelve years of his life. He and Mary Ellen Henderson lived with my father and our family and wanted to be around his grand-children. He actually met with Martin Luther King shortly after 1955 right during and after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”
“And he was down there because I had just been born in 1955,” Henderson said. “Emmet Till happened, I was born, then shortly after that, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. So, I witnessed a lot of this.”

“Mary Ellen Henderson’s sister, my aunt Edith, married Booker T. Washington’s son, Ernest Davidson Washington, or as they called him, Dave Washington. That was Booker T. Washington’s second wife, Olivia Davidson. They had a child from that union. So, you have to understand that these were the front lines. We were at Ground Zero. Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, you know, all of that there in Alabama was Ground Zero and the Front Lines.”

“But, Tuskegee was not a typical entity in itself, because I basically grew up on campus,” Henderson pointed out. “I went to school at the Laboratory School of the University, I went to all of the cultural events and sporting events, so I grew up privileged in a very rich African-American cultural environment in Tuskegee, Alabama. Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, the Tuskegee Airmen. You know, all of those things were right at my fingertips.”
How MLK Day Ought to Be Celebrated
For Henderson, the national holiday of Martin Luther King Day should focus on celebrating the life and legacy of the man, Dr. King, rather than on contemporary abstractions that turn the day into a “Day of Giving” or a “Day of Service,” or somehow an opportunity to “justify the actions of others.”
And why should Dr. King’s legacy be celebrated?
In addition to being a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, “Martin Luther King was a man of God,” Henderson said. “He was a moral leader, he was the leader of the Civil Rights Movement – its most visible leader – who was struck down way too soon. And we need to recognize him and the reason for the holiday. The holiday is not about [people’s] ‘service,’ and it’s not about a 'giving day.' Those things would not even be relevant if it were not about a national holiday in honor of the man, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And therefore, even if you want to have a Giving Day or you want to have a Day of Service, it needs to be stated in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King’s holiday.”
What Makes the City of Falls Church Such a Good Place to Celebrate MLK Day?
As Henderson recalled his family’s storied civil rights history, it became abundantly clear why the City of Falls Church is especially suited to celebrating Dr. King’s legacy. His father Edwin Bancroft Henderson helped launch the first rural chapter of the NAACP in the United States in the Tinner Hill community of Falls Church. Hence the Tinner Hill Monument.

“The Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation is founded based on an incident in 1915 and the creation of the Colored Citizens Protective League [CCPL] which protested an injustice here in the City of Falls Church where African-Americans would have been marginalized and restricted from home ownership or purchasing land in portions of the town,” Henderson recalled. “And some of those places, [African Americans] already actually owned and they were now being restricted from owning! So they fought that.”
Following a lawsuit brought by the CCPL, the Supreme Court ruled separately in 1918 that expressly-racial restrictions such as those in the City of Falls Church were unconstitutional. “And that was a big victory in favor of a small, marginalized group that established a calling for a number of people,” Henderson said. “And that group evolved, in the very next year, into the first rural branch of the NAACP. And this was a national story! The first ruling like that in America. The first such organization. So, we do this program [for MLK Day] each year to celebrate social justice here in this community and the world.”
Henderson fears that MLK Day might go the way of Presidents Day where we might soon be cursed with “MLK Day Appliance Sales” and other less-than-respectful takes on the national holiday for the civil rights icon.
Yet, Henderson is aware of how the history of the Civil Rights Movement can be glossed over by just a few mentions of Martin Luther King. “I remember when I was teaching U.S. history, there was a unit at the end of the year about Civil Rights and many of the teachers opted to say, ‘Oh, well we talked about Martin Luther King in January so we don’t need to do this unit.’ Well, yes you do! Because it’s a landmark era in American History!”
Why Understanding MLK’s Legacy is So Critical Today
For Henderson – a former Fairfax County U.S. History teacher – celebrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., goes far beyond nostalgia. Without a firm grasp of Dr. King’s life, legacy and accomplishments, people will have fewer tools to understand the vestiges and systems of racial oppression we continue to see around us today and to form strategies of resistance.
Henderson credits his wife, Nikki Henderson, for helping launch the Social Justice Committee of the City of Falls Church and Vicinity. Like Dr. King, she had a vision.
In 2017, following the terrible events of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville when neo-Nazis in the dark with torches marched toward the campus of the University of Virginia to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a city park, she worried such overtly racist protests might come to Tinner Hill.

“My wife, Nikki Graves Henderson, she had a dream and was the one who came up with this concern that, ‘Not only could that happen in Charlottesville, but it could happen here in Falls Church,’ Henderson recalled. “So, she wanted to create this organization, the Social Justice Committee of Falls Church and Vicinity, to help people address difficult conversations about race in this country.”
For the Social Justice Committee, the approach to healing racial divisions would be similar to Dr. King’s emphasis on confronting oppression head-on, but with Christian understanding and mercy. “We can get there by understanding one another and looking at things realistically,” Henderson said of Nikki’s vision. “And, by confronting the racism and hatred, we could have a better community. One that understands, tolerates and appreciates not only equality but equity.”
Reflecting on the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Trump on MLK Day, Jan. 20, Henderson described ongoing challenges to Dr. King’s civil rights vision. “There’s been a backsliding and an attack on individual freedoms and social justice in this country,” Henderson said. “I mean, when you look at places like Walmart and Meta and other places that are now getting rid of their [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] DEI programs. I applaud Costco for saying they will not backslide on that issue. But there are a number of places where, to placate the incoming president and the MAGA movement, we're seeing this more.... These issues [of racism] are more relevant today. Because with these attacks, we all know what the future brings. But if this is any indication by these mega-corporations, we’re in for some difficult times.”
For younger activists who've turned away from earlier generations’ appreciation of MLK’s legacy because of his support for “passive resistance,” and their embrace of more “militant” forms of resistance by such figures as Malcolm X, Henderson says both Dr. King and Malcolm X were “flip sides of the same coin.” They were fighting for the same ends, but selected different means or tactics to help combat racial oppression.

Dr. King’s strategy may have been “non-violent resistance,” Henderson said, “but it was not passive…. I remember in the "I Have a Dream" speech, Martin Luther King speaks of this ‘wonderful new militancy’ and even though he emphasized non-violence, he was not passive. I mean, anytime you go out and put your body on the line to be beaten and to be jailed, that’s not a passive thing.”
“I can understand the bravado people might feel in believing in self-defense, because I hold both of them up as heroes in my book,” Henderson said. “Maybe for different reasons and even through their different tactics, I understand and appreciate their advocacies as something to help bring about a new consciousness within the Black community."
And “putting their life on the line” is what Saturday’s keynote speaker, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, did during the Civil Rights Era, Henderson said.
“Ms. Mullholland was a Freedom Rider and she also sat in at the lunch counters in Mississippi,” Henderson said. “And she was harassed and beaten. And sometimes, the Whites involved were even treated worse because they were taking the sides of the Black people who were trying to end their oppression. There was this one minister in Selma, I mean they really beat him bad. They killed him…. So, Ms. Mullholland, she’s definitely a hero, or a 'she-ro,' you know?”
Refusing to Be Fearful
Finally, Henderson described how MLK's vision helps shape his view of the future as we head into the next Trump administration.
"I refuse to be fearful for the future environment. I think we are enough, okay? That people of moral integrity – that We – are enough," Henderson said. "That We will endure these next four years. There may be some difficult times. There may be some policies implemented that may make it harder, or for equity, and there may be an attack on our rights, but I believe that the pendulum has swung this way for now, but at some point it will swing back. And, I think we’ve gotten through a lot worse."
Henderson's hope is that on Saturday, Jan. 18, "we'll fill the street and the church," and he'd "like to see everyone come out and do what they’re supposed to do on Martin Luther King Day and that is to commemorate the man and his work, [consider] where we are [now], and what we need to do in these difficult times."
By Christopher Jones
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