Fairfax Civil Right Activist Lillian Blackwell Dies At 85
Title
Fairfax Civil Right Activist Lillian Blackwell Dies At 85
Date
May 14, 1996
Description
Lillian S. Blackwell, 85, a civil rights activist in Fairfax County who successfully sued to ban segregation of public accommodations in Virginia, died of an aneurysm May 10 at Fairfax Hospital. She lived in Vienna.
Mrs. Blackwell and her youngest son, Lawrence, also were plaintiffs in a 1959 suit that led to the integration of Fairfax County schools. As a member of civil rights groups in Northern Virginia, she picketed restaurants, theaters and hospitals in the 1950s to protest the exclusion of black patrons.
In 1963, Mrs. Blackwell and an Arlington woman filed a lawsuit in federal court against movie theaters that had refused to sell them tickets on the basis that there were no sections set aside for black patrons. A special three-judge panel ruled that a Virginia law providing for segregated seating was unconstitutional.
In the six months that it took the panel to hear the case and issue a ruling, nearly all movie theaters in Northern Virginia dropped their color bars.
Mrs. Blackwell was born in the Loudoun County community of Arcola and raised in Arlington and Oakton. She attended the Louise Archer School through the ninth grade and, as a young woman, worked as a seamstress and dressmaker in Washington.
She was a school bus driver in Fairfax County after World War II, ran the Dunkirk Employment Services in Vienna in the early 1960s and was employed as a household worker through the early 1980s.
Mrs. Blackwell was a Fairfax County member of the Human Relations Council and a volunteer with the organization's Horizon Day Camp. She was membership chairman of the NAACP, a member of the Friends of the Library organization that raised money for a public library for Vienna, and a founding member in Fairfax of the National Council of Negro Women and Black Women United for Action.
Mrs. Blackwell organized the first African American Girl Scout troop in Fairfax and the first integrated Brownie troop, an effort that was chronicled in Reader's Digest. She was a director of the Fairfax County Council of the Girl Scouts.
She was a member of the Vienna-Oakton-Dunn Loring United Council of Church Women, Fairfax County Fair Housing, the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, the Sutton Road Civic Association, Union Baptist Church in Vienna and Quilters Unlimited of America. She led the volunteers who created a quilt depicting black history in the county that is displayed in the Massey government office building in Fairfax.
Her husband, Philip Blackwell, died in 1984. Survivors include six children, John Blackwell of Leesburg, Grace Ellis of Ruther Glen, Va., Preston Blackwell of Culpeper, Va., Phyllis Blackwell of Alexandria, Lawrence Blackwell of Atlanta and Donna Blackwell of Vienna; three brothers; two sisters; 10 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Mrs. Blackwell and her youngest son, Lawrence, also were plaintiffs in a 1959 suit that led to the integration of Fairfax County schools. As a member of civil rights groups in Northern Virginia, she picketed restaurants, theaters and hospitals in the 1950s to protest the exclusion of black patrons.
In 1963, Mrs. Blackwell and an Arlington woman filed a lawsuit in federal court against movie theaters that had refused to sell them tickets on the basis that there were no sections set aside for black patrons. A special three-judge panel ruled that a Virginia law providing for segregated seating was unconstitutional.
In the six months that it took the panel to hear the case and issue a ruling, nearly all movie theaters in Northern Virginia dropped their color bars.
Mrs. Blackwell was born in the Loudoun County community of Arcola and raised in Arlington and Oakton. She attended the Louise Archer School through the ninth grade and, as a young woman, worked as a seamstress and dressmaker in Washington.
She was a school bus driver in Fairfax County after World War II, ran the Dunkirk Employment Services in Vienna in the early 1960s and was employed as a household worker through the early 1980s.
Mrs. Blackwell was a Fairfax County member of the Human Relations Council and a volunteer with the organization's Horizon Day Camp. She was membership chairman of the NAACP, a member of the Friends of the Library organization that raised money for a public library for Vienna, and a founding member in Fairfax of the National Council of Negro Women and Black Women United for Action.
Mrs. Blackwell organized the first African American Girl Scout troop in Fairfax and the first integrated Brownie troop, an effort that was chronicled in Reader's Digest. She was a director of the Fairfax County Council of the Girl Scouts.
She was a member of the Vienna-Oakton-Dunn Loring United Council of Church Women, Fairfax County Fair Housing, the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, the Sutton Road Civic Association, Union Baptist Church in Vienna and Quilters Unlimited of America. She led the volunteers who created a quilt depicting black history in the county that is displayed in the Massey government office building in Fairfax.
Her husband, Philip Blackwell, died in 1984. Survivors include six children, John Blackwell of Leesburg, Grace Ellis of Ruther Glen, Va., Preston Blackwell of Culpeper, Va., Phyllis Blackwell of Alexandria, Lawrence Blackwell of Atlanta and Donna Blackwell of Vienna; three brothers; two sisters; 10 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Creator
Claudia Levy
Publisher
The Washington Post
Format
Newspaper
Collection
Citation
Claudia Levy, “Fairfax Civil Right Activist Lillian Blackwell Dies At 85,” Fairfax County African American History Inventory, accessed October 24, 2026, https://fairfaxaahi.centerformasonslegacies.com/items/show/11.