Stumbling Stones: Memorializing Arlington’s Enslaved People

Monday, September 29, 2025, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM

The lives of Margaret Hyson and her children George and Charlotte – three people enslaved in the Yorktown neighborhood in the 1800s – had previously been unknown.  But now, this family’s story will be told to a broader community. Through a partnership between the Arlington Historical Society and the Black Heritage Museum of Arlington, stumbling stones, six-inch round bronze plaques, engraved with their names and dates of their births and deaths, have been embedded into the sidewalks near the locations where they were enslaved. Many more stumbling stones will be installed throughout the county. Currently, the names of 1,100 enslaved individuals have been identified.

Join us as Jessica Kaplan of the Arlington Historical Society tells us about the origin of this initiative, the research being done, the work of Arlington Tech students to recreate some of the plaques, the response of the community and where to find already embedded stumbling stones.

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