Historical Context
Alexandria County
Until after William H. Hicks' death, the county he lived in was known a Alexandria County; in 1920 the county was renamed to avoid confusion with the now-independent city of Alexandria (Rose 3). Starting in the first decade of the twentieth century, plans were made to repurpose the area as the "bedroom" of Washington, DC, with the creation of subdivisions intended to serve as housing for commuters into the capitol (157). Alexandria, then being part of DC, had been under Union control, and Fairfax was relatively unharmed during Reconstruction (Fairfax 375).
The African-American Experience in Fairfax and Arlington
The Fairfax/Arlington area was attractive to African-Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, when Hicks was born, due to low land prices, proximity to the capitol, and (to an extent) a relatively liberal environment (Fairfax 447). Many African-Americans owned their own land at the time (382), and even before the civil war, freedmen had no trouble finding work (381) and there was a notable amount of freedmen who owned land (274); as a result, the number of African-Americans in the region was increasing in the late 1800s (273), and by 1924 a third of the congregations in Arlington County were African-American (Rose 169). That said, there was certainly still far to go for the African-American community in terms of political rights; the white population's fear of a powerful African-American voting bloc was a major obstacle in their ability to gain voting rights (Fairfax 380). It could be that the family William H. Hicks was born into was experiencing a new beginning, and were being confronted with opportunities they had never had before, and their experience reflected a juxtaposition of African-Americans in the north and south.