Edwin Henderson, left, and Rohulamin Quander, right, stand at the site where, in 1915, Henderson’s grandfather established the NAACP’s first rural chapter. Both men are from two of America’s oldest families and work to ensure that historians tell the whole story. Photo by Jason Sauler Photography

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The theme for this year’s Black History Month is “African Americans and Labor,” highlighting how African Americans helped build the United States — voluntarily and involuntarily. 

Both free and enslaved African Americans constructed the U.S. Capitol, the White House and the Smithsonian Institution’s first building, the “Castle.” They laid out the first streets of the nation’s capital.  

While George Washington was leading the Revolutionary War, he left his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, in the hands of enslaved men, women and children. As he fought, they were “keeping the home fires burning, pulling weeds, harvesting crops and running his fishery, distillery and spinning house. He could get rich while slaves got nothing,” said retired Washington, D.C., administrative law Judge Rohulamin Quander. 

Quander, 81, has ancestors who were enslaved on George Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation. He has spent decades documenting the many contributions African Americans have made to the country — contributions too often overlooked. 

“It’s so important to tell the truth about American history and the many ways African Americans have contributed to that history, literally and physically building that history,” Quander said. 

One of America’s oldest families 

Quander, who is from one of the oldest documented African American families in the United States, traces his family back 11 generations to the 1670s. Their surname originated with ancestor Egya Amkwandoh, who was kidnapped in Ghana in the 1600s and forcibly brought to America. When asked his name, he answered, “Amkwandoh,” which was misinterpreted as, “I am Quando.” 

After being freed, some of the Quanders acquired land in Northern Virginia and Maryland. Today, four streets are named for the Quander family: one each in Virginia’s Fairfax County and Prince William County; one in Prince George’s County, Maryland; and one in Washington, D.C.’s Navy Yard area.  

Digging into the past 

The Quander family gathers every year for a reunion. This year’s will mark the 100th — an event expected to attract around 300 Quander descendants.  

After attending a family reunion in 1968. when he was a student at Howard University Law School. Rohulamin Quander dedicated himself to researching his ancestors’ history. 

“Attending that reunion as a student excited me to use my research skills…to verify in writing what people were saying about the Quander legacy,” he recalled. “It caused me to go to the Maryland Hall of Records in Annapolis and the Fairfax County courthouse’s archives and dig up some documents to help verify and clarify our history.”  

Today, Quander advises Mount Vernon officials on how best to incorporate African Americans into exhibits and programming.  

He also serves on the board of the Washington History Center. Fort Belvoir is planning some new housing, and he is advocating that the Army name the development “Young’s Village,” after the former segregated housing section now torn down, and to name some streets for African Americans who died in World War II and some for the Black and Indigenous families who were displaced when the Army acquired the land. 

He’s had one success at Fort Belvoir already. In 2023, he gave the keynote speech when the base changed the name of Robert E. Lee Road to EO 9981 for President Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order abolishing segregation in the military.  

Quander is also helping Virginia’s and Maryland’s American Revolution 250 Commissions “ensure that the African American presence is adequately and accurately represented,” he said. Many states are crafting plans to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s independence in 2026. 

Four Black generals 

Quander has written four books about his family, including one about his father, James W. Quander, and The Quanders: Since 1684, an Enduring African American Legacy.  

He also published a book in 2008 about his ancestor Nellie Quander, president of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Howard University in Washington, D.C. When, in 1913, she tried to get the sorority into the women’s suffragists’ procession, white leaders told her that her group would have to march in the back. She refused, and they integrated themselves into the group of white marchers.  

The Quanders are the only Black family to produce four generals in the U.S. military. In 2021, its fourth family member, Brigadier General Mark Quander, was appointed commandant of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 

Quander earned both his bachelor’s and law degrees from Howard University and had a career as an administrative law judge for the District of Columbia. He served three mayors from 1998 to 2010 as the Mayor’s Agent for Historic Preservation.  

After he retired as a judge in 2011, Quander founded a nonprofit that offers tour services. He is currently a tour guide, leading groups to Washington-area landmarks. 

“I don’t like to sit still,” he said. “It’s my passion.” As his mother put it, “I don’t want to rust out; I want to wear out.” 

Meet the Hendersons 

Another African American family, the Hendersons, has lived in Northern Virginia through slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. Its civil rights history began long before the 1960s. 

In 1915, Edwin B. Henderson and his friend Joseph Tinner defeated an ordinance in Falls Church, Virginia, that allowed racially segregated housing in the city. Today, a 15-foot pink granite arch in Falls Church marks that victory. 

They established the Colored Citizens Protective League, a group that became the first rural branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the nation.  

Today, Henderson’s grandson, Edwin B. Henderson II, is on a mission to preserve Northern Virginia’s African American history, including that of his family. He founded the nonprofit Tinner Hill Foundation in 1997 to record, interpret and celebrate African Americans’ accomplishments and courage. 

The foundation is named after the Tinner Hill district of Falls Church, land that Charles and Mary Tinner, an African American couple, purchased in the late 19th century.  

In 2024, the foundation convinced the Falls Church City Council to create the Tinner Hill Historic and Cultural District. The foundation also sponsored a mural on South Washington Street depicting local African Americans and historic sites. Every June, it hosts a free Juneteenth festival in Falls Church.  

Basketball Hall of Famer 

Like Quander, Henderson is documenting his family history.  His great-great-grandmother Eliza Henderson was enslaved on Fairfax County’s Fitzhugh plantation and sold down South for $800. She escaped enslavement after the Battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi, eventually making her way north to open a store in Washington, D.C. 

Henderson’s grandfather, who died in 1977, organized the first athletic league for African Americans. Hoping that organized basketball leagues could open doors to Black Americans at a time when many other sports were closed to minorities, Henderson began introducing basketball to Black Americans on a wide scale in 1907, when the game was less than two decades old.  

When Henderson moved into his grandfather’s Tinner Hill house in 1993, he discovered a box in the attic full of his grandfather’s writings and documents. With that wealth of information, he wrote a book, The Grandfather of Black Basketball, published last February.  

Henderson successfully got his grandfather inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 2013.  

A statue on Connecticut Avenue at the University of the District of Columbia honors the first Edwin Henderson, who attended Miner Teachers College, which trained African-American teachers. (The college became part of the University in 1977.) 

While Henderson has documented the injustices, struggles and successes of many of his ancestors, he noted that he grew up as a “privileged child.” His father, Dr. James Henry Merriweather Henderson, was a biomedical researcher, and his mother was a professor of early childhood education. When his father was on a sabbatical from Tuskegee College, the family lived in France.  

In college, Henderson studied forestry, history, photography and television engineering. He eventually returned to Tuskegee and earned a master’s degree in counseling education.  

He taught fifth grade in California, then moved to Northern Virginia to work as an elementary school counselor and middle school history teacher in Fairfax County’s public schools.  

Both Quander and Henderson are determined to fill in some of the blanks from many history books and continue to strive for social justice.  

“I spent much of last 30 years reclaiming the history that has been omitted in Falls Church and Northern Virginia,” Henderson said. “When I moved here in 1993, there was no memory of African Americans in Falls Church or even a social justice legacy. I attribute that to the sin of omission. The public memory is only so long. After that, the memory fades, and people are forgotten. It’s important to remember.”