From Loudoun to Montclair: One Woman’s Experience of the Great Migration

Note: This blog post examines one African American school teacher’s experience of the Great Migration during the first decades of the 20th century. It discusses the reasons she and others from Loudoun County made their way to Montclair, N.J., why some returned home, and the impact their time in the North had on their lives and those of others in Loudoun. Research for this blog draws on oral histories conducted by the Black History Committee of the Friends of the Thomas Balch Library and therefore focuses on those migrants who came back to Loudoun.

Overview

One person’s journey can trace the arc of an entire social movement. Flossie Sinclair Furr (1908-2004) lived as a child near Purcellville but spent her early primary school years in Montclair, N.J.[i] Her family was one of many—probably numbering in the hundreds—who left Loudoun for Montclair, either temporarily or permanently. The family’s experience was a slice of the Great Migration, the mass movement of some 6 million African Americans from the Jim Crow South to cities in the North and West from about 1915 to 1970.*[ii] 

*See By the Numbers section below.

The migration pattern from Loudoun to Montclair was just one example of members of a community in the South moving to the same northern destination, with the first migrants helping those who followed to secure jobs and housing.[iii] As early as 1870, a Montclair businessman brought two or three African Americans from Loudoun to work as house servants on a trial basis. This proved successful, and other prosperous whites seeking to “solve the servant question” did the same.[iv] In the next few decades, the newcomers would arrive from Virginia, especially Loudoun and Fauquier counties, the Carolinas, and as far away as Florida. [v] 

Montclair’s community of African Americans drew not only from two specific Virginia counties, but also from two specific estates. Dozens of former enslaved workers and their descendants came from Oakley plantation in Fauquier County, owned by a branch of the Dulany family. Dozens more came from nearby Welbourne plantation in Loudoun County, owned by another branch of the Dulany family.[vi] The[BH1] [CO2]  first African American known to have owned and operated his own business in Montclair, a newsstand, was Clifford Hooe (1870-1894), the grandson of an enslaved woman at Welbourne.[vii]

Members of the Hooe family, who trace their roots to Loudoun County, owned this building in downtown Montclair from 1906 to 1940. It housed several African American–owned businesses, including a hair salon, dental practice, dry goods store, and milliner shop as well as a meeting hall.[viii] Photo credit: Betty Holloway, Montclair African American Heritage Foundation.

By the 1890s, Montclair had emerged as a wealthy suburb of New York City with a widely admired public school system. The town opened a new high school in 1893, then considered the finest in the state.[ix] As white families moved to the town to take advantage of its schools and its location at the junction of two rail lines, so too did African Americans. The Black population in Montclair grew rapidly in the early decades of the 20th century, from about 2,500 in 1910 to 6,300 in 1930.[x] By 1935, about 90 percent of African Americans in Montclair were employed as private household workers, with sufficient incomes to support small, Black-owned businesses in town. The community’s growing affluence and the town’s educational opportunities eventually created a pathway to a college education and professional careers as teachers, doctors, lawyers, and business executives.[xi]

Why They Left

African Americans from Loudoun migrated to Montclair primarily in search of jobs and higher wages. The concentration of wealth in the densely populated suburb created ample service [CO3] opportunities for migrants, even if it meant working in the same kinds of domestic positions they could get in Loudoun. At different times, Flossie Furr’s father took jobs in Montclair as a chauffeur, butler, and handyman, while her mother worked as a cook, maid, and laundress. Flossie Furr recalled that many African Americans from Loudoun would move to Montclair for a few years, save their earnings, and return to Loudoun to buy a home or small farm.[xii] 

Henry and Laurinda Sinclair, Flossie Furr’s parents, were determined to see their only child get a good education. Flossie Furr was one of a handful of African American pupils at an elementary school in Montclair from about 1913 to 1917.[xiii] At age 81, she recalled that her teachers made no distinction between children of different races and held them to the same standards. By contrast, African American schools in Loudoun at the time were racially segregated, poorly funded, overcrowded, and often unsafe.[xiv] After they returned to Loudoun, Flossie Furr’s parents were so frustrated by the poor schools that they sent their daughter to live with relatives in Washington, D.C., where she completed 8th through 12th grades. She went on to obtain her teaching certificate from Storer College, an historically Black secondary school and teacher training college in Harpers Ferry, WV.[xv]

Second-grade class at Grove Street School, Montclair, in 1920. Flossie Furr would have attended an integrated elementary school like this one. Photo credit: Montclair History Center.

Coming Home

For most African Americans from Loudoun, their migration to Montclair flowed one way, but an important minority made their way back home. Their experience in the North may have given them a sense of possibility—of a way of life free of the strictures and daily indignities of Jim Crow segregation[BH4] [CO5] —and even a sense that social change was possible in the South. Flossie Furr’s parents seem to have returned by design, their mission to advance their economic standing accomplished. By 1930, her parents owned their own home in Purcellville, free of a mortgage.[xvi] 

Some African Americans who obtained their schooling in Montclair and returned to Loudoun found success as small business owners. Jesse Randolph (1916-1987), for example, graduated from high school in Montclair, where he lived with an aunt and uncle, and then returned to Loudoun. He went on to establish his own trash hauling service, the first to contract with the towns of Leesburg and Purcellville.[xvii] Basham Simms (1924-2006) went through junior high school in Montclair and then learned bricklaying at the Leesburg Training Center. He went on to found his own contracting business and to become the first African American elected to the Purcellville Town Council, in 1967.[xviii]

Carver Elementary School classroom, 1948. Opened in 1946, Carver was Loudoun’s first all-Black elementary school to have indoor plumbing and central heat.[xix]

Flossie Furr’s journey from Loudoun to Montclair and back again saw her move into the professional class, a feat of social mobility that was almost impossible to achieve in Loudoun, with its poorly resourced, segregated Black schools. Until 1941, when Douglass High School opened, African Americans in Loudoun who had the means sent their children to four-year high schools in Washington and Baltimore, to Storer, and to the private Manassas Industrial school, even though it meant separating families.[xx] The racial inequality of Loudoun’s schools created enormous inequality of opportunity.

Flossie Furr in front of Carver Elementary School in Purcellville, 1960s. Photograph by Margaret Yocom. Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Legacy

Flossie Furr taught for more than 30 years in Loudoun County. She began teaching in one- and two-room schoolhouses and then taught at Carver Elementary School, Loudoun’s first “modern” all-Black school, from 1947 until it closed in 1968. More than 30 years after she retired, former students remembered her as a disciplinarian and taskmaster who instilled the value of perseverance and brought out the best in her pupils.[xxi] Within her own family, Flossie Furr’s impact was profound. She raised seven children, much of the time as a single mother.[xxii] Most of her children went on to college, and at least three became teachers.[xxiii]

If you or someone you know spent time in Montclair, N.J., or knew Flossie Furr, we hope you’ll share your stories with the Loudoun Museum.

By the Numbers:

Change in Black Population for Virginia and Loudoun County, 1900-1960

During the years of the Great Migration, Loudoun lost a greater share of its African American population than did Virginia as a whole. Loudoun’s Black population declined in every decade between 1900 and 1950, while Virginia’s experienced a net loss only in the 1920s. The presence of the Washington and Old Dominion railroad in Loudoun no doubt facilitated the exodus by providing a quick route to Washington, D.C. and northern cities beyond.

Leesburg’s train passenger station, ca. 1907-14. Many African Americans would have left Loudoun County from here.

The hardening of racial attitudes in Virginia almost certainly spurred many African Americans to leave. The steepest decline in Loudoun’s Black population occurred between 1900 and 1910. This decade coincided with the adoption of the Virginia Constitution of 1902, which entrenched the disenfranchisement of African Americans and poor whites by instituting poll taxes and literacy tests. It also mandated racially segregated schools.[xxiv]

The decade from 1920 to 1930 saw the second-steepest decline in Loudoun’s Black population. This decade saw the introduction of two of the state’s harshest Jim Crow laws: the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which introduced the most stringent prohibition against interracial marriage in the country, and the Public Assemblages Act of 1926, the first in the country to require racially segregated public entertainment spaces. [xxv]

	Total VA Population[xxvi]	VA Black Population	% Change in Black Population	Total Loudoun Population[xxvii]	Loudoun Black Population	% Change in Black Population
1900	1,854,184	660,722	4	21,948	5,868	*
1910	2,061,612	671,096	1.6	21,167	5,221	-11
1920	2,309,187	690,017	2.8	20,577	4,810	-7.9
1930	2,421,851	650,165	-5.8	19,852	4,347	-9.6
1940	2,677,777	661,449	1.7	20,291	4,094	-5.8
1950	3,318,680	734,211	11	21,147	3,976	-2.9
1960	3,966,949	816,258	11.2	24,549	4,345**	9.3
*1890 VA census records destroyed by fire; unable to calculate change in Black population
**1960=“Nonwhite population”

Out-migration of Blacks from the county and the state was higher than this table indicates, due to natural population growth. The loss is especially evident when compared to the growth of the state’s overall population, which more than doubled between 1900 and 1960, while the Black population increased by less than 25 percent. The state-wide level of out-migration would have been higher if not for the mass movement of African Americans from rural areas to cities as Virginia urbanized. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population in Newport News and Norfolk, for example, surged by 83 and 76 percent, respectively, as poor, rural Blacks (and whites) sought jobs in the cities’ docks and shipyards.[xxviii] [xxix]

FOOTNOTES:

[i] Flossie Furr, Loudoun County Oral History Project, 1975-1998 (M 014), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

[ii] Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Random House, 2010, pp. 9-11.

[iii] Ibid., p. 243.

[iv] Henry Whittemore, History of Montclair Township, State of New Jersey. New York: The Suburban Publishing Company, 1894, p. 105. https://archive.org/details/historyofmontcla00whit/page/104/mode/2up. I am grateful to Joseph Roby for bringing this source to my attention.

[v] Patricia Hampson Eget, “Challenging Containment: African Americans and Racial Politics in Montclair, New Jersey, 1920-1940,” in New Jersey History, Vol 126, No. 1 (2011), p.1, https://njh.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/njh/article/view/1101/2549; Speech by Montclair historian Michael Farrelly marking Montclair’s sesquicentennial, May 28, 2018, https://www.montclairnjusa.org/Visitors/About-Montclair/Montclair-Historian-Memorial-Day-Speech; Montclair History Center, “A Place To Become: Montclair Through the Eyes of the Glenridge Avenue YWCA Women (1920-1965),” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEbkKsuaOpg.

[vi] Joseph Roby, “Enslaved at Oakley and Beyond Project” blog post, November 19, 2023. https://enslavedatoakley.com/2024/01/01/are-you-researching-any-of-the-same-people-names-or-places/

[vii] Montclair African-American Heritage Foundation program, “Alice Hooe Foster: A Celebration of Her Life and Legacy,” February 18, 2024. Recorded by MontclairTV34, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-GJzCXZwzw.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Elaine Johnson Fiveland, “Randall Spaulding: The Father of Montclair High School.” Montclair History Center blog, September 8, 2020. https://www.montclairhistory.org/new-blog/2020/8/30/randall-spaulding-the-father-of-montclair-high-school-part-1#:~:text=In%20the%20fall%20of%201874,over%20the%20next%2020%20years.

[x] Eget, pp. 12-13.

[xi] Ibid., pp. 5, 8-10.

[xii] Flossie Furr, Loudoun County Oral History Project, 1975-1998 (M 014), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

[xiii] Ibid.

[xiv] Larry Roeder and Barry Harrelson, Dirt Don’t Burn: A Black Community’s Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2023.

[xv] Flossie Furr, Loudoun County Oral History Project, 1975-1998 (M 014), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

[xvi] 1930 Census record for Henry Sinclair. Accessed through Ancestry.com.

[xvii] The Essence of a People: Portraits of African Americans Who Made a Difference in Loudoun County. Compiled and Published by The Black History Committee of The Friends of the Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA, May 2001, pp. 50-51.

[xviii] Basham Simms, Loudoun County Oral History Project, 1975-1998 (M 014), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

[xix] Roeder and Harrelson, p. 166.

[xx] Alvin Dodson, Helen Lee Gross, Mary Fields Jackson, Gladys Jackson Bryant Lewis, Glandwood Moore, Carrie Nokes, Verdie Robinson, Estelle Cooper Randolph, John Tolbert, Jr., Mary Frances Wiley Webb. Black History Committee Oral History Project, 2000-2008 (M012), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

[xxi] Carver School Graduates Panel Discussion, October 21, 2001. Black History Committee Oral History Project, 2000-2006 (M 012), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

[xxii] Abstract of Divorce Decree for Flossie S. Furr and Omar G. Furr. Commonwealth of Virginia, February 16, 1949. Accessed through Ancestry.com.

[xxiii] Flossie Furr, Loudoun County Oral History Project, 1975-1998 (M 014), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

[xxiv] Jane Purcell Guild, Black Laws of Virginia. Compiled by Karen Hughes White and Joan Peters. Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County, VA; 1996.

[xxv] J. Douglas Smith, Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002, pp. 82-89, 117.

[xxvi] Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States. U.S. Census Bureau Population Division, Working Paper No. 56, September 2002.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2002/demo/POP-twps0056.pdf.

[xxvii] 1900 Data: Eugene Scheel, Timeline of Important Events in African-American History in Loudoun County, Virginia. https://www.loudounhistory.org/history/african-american-chronology/.

1910 Data: US Census Bureau Supplement for Virginia: Population, Agriculture, Manufacturing, Mining, and Quarries, p.602. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1910/abstract/supplement-va.pdf.

1920 Data: US Bureau of the Census, 14th Census of the United States, State Compendium, Virginia: Statistics of Population, Occupation, Agriculture, Manufactures, and Mines and Quarries for the State, Counties, and Cities, 1925. https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/06229686v44-49ch2.pdf

1930 Data: US Census, Volume 3: Population by States, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1932/dec/1930a-vol-03-population.html

1940 Data: US Census, Volume 2: Characteristics of the Population by State, Virginia. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1940/population-volume-2/33973538v2p7ch3.pdf

1950 Data: U.S. Census, Volume 2: Characteristics of the Population by State, Virginia https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-2/37784122v2p46ch3.pdf

1960 Data: US Census: General Population Characteristics, Virginia. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1960/population-volume-1/09768066v1p48ch3.pdf

[xxviii] 1910 Data: US Census Bureau Supplement for Virginia: Population, Agriculture, Manufacturing, Mining, and Quarries, p.602. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1910/abstract/supplement-va.pdf

[xxix] 1930 Data: US Census, Volume 3: Population by States, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1932/dec/1930a-vol-03-population.html