Reston Black Focus Social Outreach
Reston Black Focus was an organization that tried very heavily to engage in social outreach for the African American community at Reston. A major aspect of its social outreach was the yearly hosting of The Black Culture festival. In this event the culture of African Americans would be widely celebrated through the exhibition of Afro centric art, music shows, poetry and Black literature reading, and through the inclusion of Black guest speakers. It was the hope of Reston black Focus to positively influence the African American youth to be proud of their background, as well as encourage the education of young black people.
The local Newspapers of Reston were big promoters of Reston Black Focus Inc. and its goals of social outreach. With the backing of the Newspapers Reston Black focus made itself visible to not only the African American population of Reston, but also to the white majority community. Since the late 60s and early 70s were a time of drastic change in the United States when it came to racial dynamics and social order. The desegregation of neighborhoods and schools came about in Northern Virginia at this time. Reston was a so called “New Town”, which could be described as a basically being a planned urban city, which was “originally a mix of young professionals and blue-collar workers” [1]. The new racial inclusion of New Town like Reston meant that there was need for Black community members to have an organization looking after their integration into a white majority community, as well as safeguarding their culture. Reston Black Focus would attempt to reach out to the African Americans of Reston by promoting job offers to them, and by encouraging education through scholarships and an active agenda in the local school county board. The promotion of employment would be a big part of the goals of Reston Black Focus as they made a point to publicly promote job opportunities at their events and tried to provide job opportunities through organizational connections. Part of the public nature of the Reston Black Focus agenda was to show positive image to the larger Reston Community. Most white citizens in Reston lived with relatively minor contact with the African community up until the late 60’s and so Reston Black Focus made a point to portray itself and the African Americans of Reston, as an organization that was positively involved in the community. In recent U.S. history urban projects like Levittown’s in the late 40s and early 50s continued a legacy of segregation as could be seen in other part of the country; “in 1960 not a single one of the Long Island Levittown's 82,000 residents was black” [2]. Such patterns were worrying to Reston Black Focus and it was the hope of the organization that Americas "New Town", which was a planned urban area, would be an opportunity to deviate from the norm.
The large amount of information given in Newspapers and Periodicals on the activities of Reston Black Focus gives some very key insight into their success and their participation within Reston. It seems that the Black Culture Festival was typically scheduled near or around Labor Day so as to attract more visitors to the event. I can be seen in the news source #931 that the event organizers describe themselves as “very pleased” with the festival overall. It seems that the event itself attracted hundreds and it can be seen that member of the White community also visited the event. This would have been a good sign for Reston Black Focus as integration was a part of the goals. The success of the Black culture festival would allow for the general Reston Public to view Reston Black Focus in a positive light. Local Newspapers and periodicals would lend a lot of public promotion to Reston Black Focus and surprisingly acts of racial hate or prejudice against Reston Black Focus or its festival were kept as a minimum and usually non-violent.
[1] Stein, Toward New Towns for America. 243
[2] Stein, Toward New Towns for America. 241