War Between the Streets: Neighbors fight over Confederate road names
On the corner of Confederate Lane and Plantation Parkway in the Civil War-themed housing development of Mosby Woods, a “Black Lives Matter” lawn sign faces the two street markers.
A few blocks away in the same Northern Virginia development, other signs urge neighbors to “Save Ranger Rd!!” while cars bear parking permits with the neighborhood’s logo: a Confederate Raider on horseback charging into battle with saber raised.
Mosby Woods, a quiet cluster of 523 homes in Fairfax City built in the mid-20th century, is a community that has grown divided over its identity as the City Council considers renaming its Confederate-named streets.
For decades, street names that reflected Virginia’s Confederate past were a sometimes awkward fact of life for the neighborhood’s residents, in line with the surrounding landscape of Civil War battleground sites and historical markers, monuments and highways honoring Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
That changed with the murder of George Floyd by a former Minneapolis police officer in 2020, which unleashed a reckoning over systemic racism in the country that, in turn, ignited a backlash against perceived anti-white sentiments that has filled social media feeds and fueled a culture war over race and ethnicity.
Now, the increasingly diverse neighborhood named after Confederate army battalion commander John S. Mosby that is otherwise a typical suburban enclave — with summer block parties and holiday decoration contests — is another battleground, with the City Council set to decide in June whether nine streets in Mosby Woods should be called something else.
Residents say their community is straining under the weight of the topic, noting that some neighbors are no longer friendly to one another as they walk their dogs past Reb Street or shuttle their kids to school along Blue Coat Drive.
“This is such a lovely community and people are nervous that this conversation is going to ruin that,” said Amanda Stamp, who has lived with her husband in their Antietam Avenue house for six years.
One neighbor suggested she move, telling her “you don’t belong here” after learning that she supported changing the street names, Stamp said.
“I feel like that’s how our whole country is right now,” she said. “‘You either agree with me or we don’t talk.’”
Grace Gillespie realized the group she co-founded in 2020 — “Neighbors for Change” — had touched a nerve when she returned home after passing out flyers about renaming the streets and read an email accusing the volunteer organization of being funded by liberal philanthropist George Soros.
“I actually had to look up who George Soros was,” Gillespie recalled.
More emails followed, some from outside the community.
“If those who forget history are bound to repeat it, I would HATE to see what happens to those who try to rewrite it,” one read, calling the effort “virtue signaling” and signing off by suggesting that Gillespie and her neighbor Laura Bowles, the group’s co-founder, “kill yourselves.”
They informed the police, who took a report but no charges resulted from the case, a Fairfax police spokeswoman said.
Gillespie’s family has been in Mosby Woods since it was built, a common boast in a neighborhood of brick ramblers and two-story colonial-style houses 45 minutes from D.C. that features its own community swimming pool.