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The Spanish-American War period is part of the commemoration in 2007 by the Fairfax County Citizens’ Committee of the four hundred years since the English landing at the Jamestown Settlement on May 14, 1607. This war was a milestone for Fairfax County for two reasons: it helped develop Dunn Loring; and it triggered the migration of Filipino Americans, some of whom settled in Fairfax County along with other Asian Americans. Four hundred years after Jamestown, Asian Americans have become the largest minority group in Fairfax County – in 2005, 153,000 residents or 15% of the Fairfax County population have Asian heritage.
Camp Alger and Dunn Loring. On February 24, 2006, The Virginia legislature passed Senate Joint Resolution No. 191 on the occasion of Dunn Loring’s 120th anniversary. It stated “during the Spanish-American War, the founding of Camp Russell A. Alger brought growth and prosperity to Dunn Loring, and among the troops trained at Camp Alger was the celebrated author-poet Carl Sandburg, after whom the present Sandburg Street was named.”
Photo above shows Camp Alger in Dunn Loring and Falls Church, 1898 (Courtesy of the Fairfax Historical Commission) Following the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor in February 1898 and the declaration of war against Spain in April, a call for volunteers was issued. Overnight the Army’s quota was filled and President William McKinley selected a site between Falls Church and Vienna for the assembly point. The site was intended to be symbolic of a reunited North and South dedicated in common cause. Further, it was handy to Washington, connected by both steam railroads and electric trolley lines. On Friday, May 13, 1898, Camp Alger was established, in honor of Secretary of War Russell A Alger, who, coincidentally, had served in Fairfax County with the Union Army during the Civil War. More than 23,000 soldiers from 16 states entered the camp’s gateway – the railroad hamlet of Dunn Loring. In the end, Camp Alger barely fulfilled its purpose before it had to be closed in August 1898 after an epidemic of typhoid fever. The War Department began the sale of land in September 1898, as Falls Church and Dunn Loring settled back into a more leisurely way of life. Filipino Americans and the Asian American Community in Virginia and Fairfax County. Meanwhile, the Spanish-American War led to the Philippines becoming an American territory and Filipino Americans began permanent settlements in America. They first came to Hawaii in 1906 as farm laborers. They later immigrated to other states, including Virginia, as nurses, doctors, and other professionals. The 1930 census found 45,208 Filipinos in the forty-eight mainland states—with more than one hundred living in Virginia. By the 2000 census, Filipino Americans had grown to some 2.4 million--or about 20% of the Asian American population. Filipino Americans represent the second largest Asian American group after Chinese Americans.
Filipino Americans have valued integration as active contributing members in the American society; many have chosen interracial marriages. In the state of Virginia, Congressman Robert C. Scott of the 3rd District and Secretary of Public Safety John W. Marshall are both of Filipino heritage, as well as African American heritage.
 In November 1992, Congressman Robert Cortez Scott became only the second African American from Virginia to be elected to the United States House of Representatives and the first since "Reconstruction.” Having a maternal grandfather of Filipino ancestry also gives Congressman Scott the distinction of being the first American with Filipino heritage to serve in the United States Congress. Congressman Robert Cortez Scott has chaired the Civil Rights Task Force of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
 John W. Marshall has served with distinction as Virginia’s Secretary of Public Safety since 2002. He began his public safety career as a member of the Virginia State Police, earning promotions from the rank of Trooper to Special Agent to Sergeant during his 14 years of service. Between 1994 and 1990, he served as a U.S. Marshal for the Eastern District of Virginia. In 1999, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton to be the head of the U.S. Marshals Service. Secretary John Marshall, his brother, his father – the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall – and his mother, Cecilia Suyat Marshall, a Filipino American originally from Hawaii, used to live in Fairfax County.
Changes in US immigration laws, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War increased immigration from Asia to the U.S. By the 2000 census, Fairfax County has become one of the top 25 counties in the U.S. in terms of the proportion of Asian American residents. The Asian American population in Fairfax County totaled 126,038 or 13% of the county population. The group included Korean Americans (28,028 or 2.9%); Asian Indian (25,700 or 2.7%); Vietnamese Americans (23,044 or 2.4%); Chinese Americans (17,756 or 1.8%); Japanese Americans (2,892 or 0.3%). Filipino Americans ranked 5th, with 11,632 Filipino Americans who constituted 1.2% of the Fairfax county population.
Table 1: Fairfax County Population by Race and Ethnicity, 2000 | Race | Non-Hispanic | | Hispanic | | Total | | | # | % | # | % | # | % | | White alone | 624,296 | 72.4% | 53,608 | 50.1% | 677,904 | 69.9% | | Black or African American alone | 81,287 | 9.4% | 1,811 | 1.7% | 83,098 | 8.6% | American Indian or Alaska Native alone | 1,834 | 0.2% | 727 | 0.7% | 2,561 | 0.3% | | Asian alone | 125,585 | 14.5% | 453 | 0.4% | 126,038 | 13.0% | Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone | 616 | 0.1% | 75 | 0.1% | 691 | 0.1% | | Some other race alone | 2,473 | 0.3% | 41,546 | 38.8 | 44,019 | 4.5% | | Two or more races | 26,700 | 3.1% | 8,738 | 8.2% | 35,438 | 3.6% | | Total | 862,791 | 100.0 | 106,958 | 100.0 | 969,749 | 100.0 |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census of Population & Housing, Table P7.
Asian Americans have become the largest minority group in Fairfax County. By 2005, Fairfax County has become home to 152,830 Asian Americans (15.2% of the county population of over one million). This group represented 46% of Virginia’s total Asian American population of 329,529 (4.4% of the 7.6 million Virginians).
Asian Americans in the Fairfax County Landscape.  As I walk out of my Edgewater neighborhood to Burke Lake Road, I am reminded of the ways in which the Asian American community has been integrated into the life of Fairfax County. The Korean American Church – The Happiness Presbyterian Church of Washington – has been meeting in the church built in 1891 by an African American congregation. The Little Zion Baptist congregation has moved to a new building at 10185 Zion Drive.
In addition to changing the demographic composition of Fairfax County, the influx of Asian American residents has changed the landscape. My family has enjoyed our favorite Philippine and Thai cuisines during our frequent celebrations with our friends. Aging suburban strip malls have been reinvigorated by businesses catering to Asian customers and restaurants offering a variety of Asian cuisines. Weekend language and culture schools have sprung up to broaden the American education of Asian Americans and other interested students. The growth of the Asian American population also has begun to influence cultural life, with a proliferation of traditional arts associations, many of them affiliated with churches or temples. Many communities have sponsored annual festivals to celebrate the diverse cultures, traditions and talents from Asia. In 2006, 17,000 visitors joined the third annual Reston Asian Festival showcasing cultures from the Philippines, China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, India, and Thailand. All these have enriched the Fairfax County lifestyle.
The commercial landscape of Fairfax County has been a particularly active arena for Asian American contributions. Fairfax County has more Asian-owned firms than any other locality in the Washington area and Virginia, and more of these businesses than 37 states. Fairfax County accounts for about 47 percent of all the Asian-owned businesses in Virginia and 35.6 percent of the Asian-owned businesses in the Washington area.
On May 16, 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 14,313 Asian-owned businesses operated in Fairfax County in 2002, a 34.7 percent increase since 1997 when the last count was taken. The Fairfax County increase is larger than the 24 percent national increase noted by the Census Bureau. The 2002 Economic Census found that Asian-owned firms in Fairfax County:
-- employed 25,075 people in 2002, up 49 percent since 1997;
-- had $2.7 billion in sales and receipts;
-- had payrolls totaling more than $922 million.
Such business growth helps Fairfax County fund public services such as a top-ranked public school system and library, public safety, social services and park systems.
2006 Fairfax County School Board Chairman Ilryong Moon. In Fairfax County, the first and only Asian American elected official is Ilryong Moon who was first elected in 1995. He moved from Korea to the U.S. with his family in 1974. He arrived as a 17-year-old rising junior, but repeated the 10th grade to learn English as an ESL student.
 Ilryong Moon went on to become a cum laude graduate of Harvard and then to a law school. He is now a partner of Moon, Park & Associates in Fairfax and his main practice area is in business law. He has held key positions, including At-Large Commissioner on the Fairfax County Planning Commission; Vice President of a local Rotary Club; and member of Virginia Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. His wife, Haewon, is the coordinator of piano department at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. He has two sons—one just graduated from the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) and will head to Harvard in September 2006 and another, a rising sophomore at TJ.
Ilryong Moon believes that “the diverse communities in Fairfax should all work together to build a better community and they can certainly build a better community by working together. Although the county enjoys the best reputation as a model of education in the whole country, we need to improve what we have. As Fairfax has the most diverse student body and an increasing population, I want to hire more bi-lingual staff and teachers. I want to get more resources to raise the standard of teachers’ training and pay them better. I want to decrease class size as class sizes are a factor in success and a key to reduction in disparity.” He wants his children to grow up and live here not just as “hyphenated” Asian-Americans, but as “full-pledged” Americans.
A Note from the Foley Family in Burke: Celebrating Filipino and Irish Heritages. In 1967, the Supreme Court abolished the barrier that would have made it impossible for my family to enjoy life as Fairfax County residents. Before 1967, state governments were able to deny marriage licenses to interracial couples and punish them with fines, imprisonment, and hard labor. Richard and Mildred Loving were dragged out of bed by Virginia police and arrested for being married outside of their race. When the Supreme Court ruled in their favor in Loving v. Virginia (June 12, 1967), interracial relationships were legalized nationwide.
I was born in Manila, Philippines and moved to the US in 1970. I met Michael Daniel Foley, a fourth-generation Irish American from California, in 1972 and we were married in 1973 in Alexandria, Virginia. Our family moved to Fairfax County in 1980, after serving overseas with the US Department of State in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Cebu, Philippines; and Leningrad in the former Soviet Union. Our children, Joshua Daniel and Melinda Corazon, graduated from West Springfield High School and Joshua also graduated from George Mason University. Michael, Joshua, and I are US government public servants, and Melinda is a writer who now lives in Los Angeles, California. Mike and I moved in 1996 to the Edgewater Community in Burke, Virginia that was developed by Stanley Martin from 1990 to 1998. The community is located in the area of the proposed ill-fated Burke international airport. That proposal was canceled in 1958 in response to vigorous Burke community protests and the Dulles international airport was built instead.
Sources: 1. (Steadman, Falls Church) from Industrial and Historical Sketch of Fairfax County, Virginia, 1907 as quoted in “Fairfax County in Virginia: A Pictorial History” by Ross and Nan Netherton, 1986.
2. Filipinos were the earliest Asians to cross the Pacific Ocean for the North American continent because they were impressed into service in the Manila galleon trade between Mexico and the Philippines from 1565 to 1815. Some jumped ship and in 1763, “Manilamen” settled in what became Louisiana state. (source: “Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans” by Fred Cordova, 1983.)
3. May 16, 2006 Press Release by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority.
Corazon, Michael, Melinda, and Joshua Foley -- Family Picture in Burke, Virginia |
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