Article Text

“She carried the tensions of a community on her shoulders.”

That message now greets students at Meridian High School’s Marian Costner Selby Peace Garden, a rooftop space honoring the woman who became the school’s first Black graduate amid the upheaval of desegregation.

Falls Church City Public Schools celebrated the garden’s opening Sunday, May 18, with Selby, her family, students, educators, city leaders and the artists who helped tell her story. The fifth-floor installation combines a reflective outdoor space with artwork and a walking tour documenting Selby’s life and the racial realities of Falls Church in the early 1960s.

Selby helped shape and approve the project. Members of her family and circle of friends arrived wearing shirts bearing her portrait, while Mayor Letty Hardi, Superintendent Peter Noonan, Meridian Principal Peter Laub, City Council members and student representatives joined the ribbon-cutting ceremony led by Marybeth Connelly, a council member and the school division’s director of strategic planning and community engagement.

A student who changed her school

Selby entered George Mason High School, now Meridian, as a sophomore in 1961. Virginia and other Southern states were then retreating from “massive resistance,” the campaign to obstruct public-school integration even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional in 1954.

She graduated in 1964 as the school’s first Black graduate.

The garden’s introductory plaque notes that Selby describes her role simply as going to school. In the context of Virginia’s history of racial discrimination, however, the installation says her actions did far more: They opened doors for generations of students.

“Every day seemed to have a challenge, and Marian faced them all with grace and humor,” the plaque reads. “She carried the tension of a community on her shoulders.”

Created as a place where students can reflect, connect and treat one another with kindness, the garden is enclosed by glass walls that draw in natural light. It includes green benches, energy-conserving skylights and cedar planters designed and built by students in a Meridian design class.

Selby and student organizations, including the Black Student Union, reviewed the space. Inside, 13 museum-style plaques use photographs and historical accounts to trace her life, the prejudice she encountered and the community she helped change.

Art captures an isolated walk

A prominent feature is local artist Asia Anderson’s 10-by-14.5-foot mural, “A Path of Her Own,” completed in 2025. It portrays a young Selby walking determinedly toward school while surrounded by flowers, butterflies and other images of hope and possibility.

Anderson said she wanted the painting to acknowledge that Selby faced the backlash of integration alone without leaving her visually isolated. The garden surrounding her becomes both a pathway and a runway, reflecting Selby’s strength, fashion and personality.

Working primarily from one yearbook photograph, Anderson reconstructed what Selby might have worn during that era. She depicted her holding books and a bag, alert but ready to move forward. Selby approved of the portrait, including the artist’s decision to make her skirt slightly shorter than typical period clothing.

Anderson also designed symbolic flower decals for the garden’s glass walls.

Nearby, Roxanne Kaylor’s 2025 sculpture “Marian in Style” presents a life-size silhouette imagining Selby as a high school student in the 1960s. Its raw steel evokes what Kaylor called Selby’s steely personality, while changing patterns of light and darkness suggest both her courage and the positive and negative experiences she endured as the school’s sole integrator.

A promise beyond changing the name

Noonan said the school division made a commitment when it renamed George Mason High School as Meridian: It would do more than replace a name. It would teach the community’s history while working to make Falls Church more equitable.

“And this garden, and naming it after you, Marian, is part of that promise,” he told Selby.

The superintendent said many community members first learned Selby’s story in 2024 while marking the school division’s 75th anniversary and studying its historic firsts. He thanked her for permitting the schools to share her experience and explain what happened on the campus within the broader history of the city.

Noonan also recognized Anderson, Kaylor and graphic designer James Hallock, who produced the photograph-rich historical panels. He credited Connelly with coordinating the many pieces of the project.

Connelly thanked Selby for supplying photographs, taking calls and repeatedly reviewing the material written about her. She also recognized Black Student Union members, their adviser, project writers, the Mary Riley Styles Public Library’s Local History Room, the Selby family, DS Metal Works, horticultural specialists, printers, design teacher Kenny George, Meridian’s sustainability coordinator, custodians and Falls Church City Television.

Samantha Gabriel, a Meridian junior representing the Black Student Union, thanked Selby for making greater justice, inclusion and opportunity possible. She urged the community to continue building a school where students know they are wanted, regardless of their backgrounds.

Flowers turn into a family tribute

Before Selby spoke, her son David presented her with a symbolic bouquet. It included a lily for resilience, strength and innocence; a sunflower for hope and overcoming hardship; a yellow gladiolus for energy and vitality; and a black rose representing both Selby’s ability to command attention and the end of the thinking that once sought to exclude her.

David explained that the bouquet was not meant for his mother to keep. He asked her to find someone in the room who needed joy, reflecting her habit of uplifting others at every gathering.

Selby chose Andrea, the wife of a close first cousin whose funeral had taken place the previous day. She walked into the audience and gave her the flowers as the room applauded through tears.

“If you went through what this family went through yesterday, and then they get up and come and support somebody else — you deserve ’em, baby,” Selby said.

She followed the emotional exchange with humor, joking about trying to be obedient when asked to make remarks. Selby then thanked her relatives and friends before turning to the city and its educators.

She praised Falls Church for embracing history in full, rather than treating Black history as something separate. The city, she said, is making sure its past is told truthfully.

Selby said she is proud to have attended Falls Church schools because its teachers are willing to confront history regardless of outside restrictions. But she emphasized that remembering the past should serve the future rather than trap people in old struggles.

She compared that outlook to driving: A driver checks the rearview mirror but focuses primarily through the windshield on the road ahead.

Teaching children to become changemakers

Selby also thanked the city for allowing her to visit classrooms and meet students across grade levels. Her final school sessions of the year involved more than 100 kindergartners split between two groups.

Those visits convinced her that Falls Church’s lessons are working, she said, because children are being taught that they can become changemakers.

In one classroom, a bulletin board displayed familiar historical figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. alongside Selby herself. What caught her attention most was a mirror labeled, “You can be a Change-maker,” allowing each student to see their own reflection among those examples.

Selby recalled leaving the class with the words of a church song in mind: “I’ve gotta feeling that everything’s gonna be alright.”

The audience began repeating the line in a call-and-response exchange. Selby then warned, playfully, that she intended to return to the schools without waiting for Black History Month.

“We teach history all year,” she said.

The ceremony concluded with a countdown and the ceremonial cutting of the ribbon.

A garden intended for peace

Afterward, Selby said she wants students to understand the garden exactly as its name suggests: It is a place for peace, without uproar or confusion.

She praised the school division’s approach to civil-rights education and said other parts of the country could learn from Falls Church. People need to understand earlier struggles, she said, but should not carry those conflicts forward. They should use that knowledge to begin again.

Hardi called the garden a moving commemoration of an essential part of Falls Church history. Selby’s resilience and determination, the mayor said, demonstrate why communities must tell the truth about their past, whether good or bad.

As a parent of three children in the school system, Hardi said she values having them attend schools that celebrate people willing to make changes and undertake difficult work. She also praised the transformation of a space whose purpose was still uncertain while Meridian was being built.

Noonan said the opening felt historic and reinforced the school division’s commitment to welcoming every student. Sharing painful history can be difficult, he said, but doing so is necessary to prevent the same failures from being repeated.

He described Selby as a personal inspiration whose presence brings him joy, particularly when he considers what her journey must have demanded.

Connelly called the ceremony the culmination of extensive work and said she was thrilled to see so many people gather around Selby.

Laub said the attendance, which drew people from many parts of Falls Church life, made the day especially meaningful. He was also proud that students had helped review the historical material and participate in the garden’s design and construction.

The result, he said, gives young people a chance to encounter local history simply by walking through their school.

City Council member David Snyder said the installation reflects how Falls Church has improved during his 33 years on the council. He hopes students learn that they are not bound by past mistakes and can shape their own futures through education and commitment.

Students see how far the school has come

Ninth-grader Vivian Sotelino said the artwork and Selby’s remarks made the history memorable, particularly because she rarely visits the fifth floor.

The ceremony showed her that Meridian is open to change and underscored how dramatically the school has evolved in less than a century. She said students should reflect on what Selby endured and recognize what it took for Meridian to become as diverse as it is today.

For Selby’s niece, Debra Costner Grant, walking through the garden created a deeply personal connection between generations.

Grant graduated from George Mason High School in 1985 and spent grades six through 12 there, including two and a half years as a cheerleader. Only two Black students were in her graduating class, but she remembers feeling accepted by close friends and classmates.

She said she did not fully understand as a student what her aunt had made possible. Selby had confronted far more hardship as the first to integrate the school, perhaps clearing the way for Grant to feel that she belonged.

Some painful family experiences were rarely discussed when Grant was growing up. Seeing her grandparents pictured on the walls of her former school, alongside images and artwork honoring her aunt, was something she never imagined.

“I couldn’t be prouder,” Grant said.