By Diane Bernard, The Washington Post, November 3, 2021
On a sunny spring day in 1963, 14-year-old Violetta Sharps Jones rode atop a burgundy red convertible down the main street of her segregated neighborhood in College Park, Md. Adorned with a tiara and white sash reading “Miss Lakeland,” she waved to the crowd, representing the aspirations of four generations of African Americans who built the thriving community near the University of Maryland.
“It was such an honor,” said Jones, who is now vice-chair of the Lakeland Community Heritage Project, which documents the neighborhood’s history. She added, “You talk about a village raising a child. That’s what Lakeland was.”
Established at the turn of the 20th century on land prone to flooding, Lakeland was the only place in College Park that African Americans could live at the time, according to Mary Seis, a University of Maryland American Studies professor whose students have conducted oral histories with Lakelanders for the Heritage Project.
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