In a Pocket of Prince William

In a Pocket of Prince William Black Residents Find Comfort and Company in New Neighborhoods By Nikita StewartWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A01 When Toni and Ronald Moore were relocating from Georgia to the Washington area five years ago, they looked for a place similar to suburban DeKalb County, a popular, affluent, predominantly black community outside of Atlanta. Instead of choosing Prince George's County, the nation's wealthiest black-majority county, the Moores ended up in mostly white Prince William County. Yet they say they do not feel like outsiders. They are surrounded by other middle- and upper-middle-class blacks who have bought homes costing as much as $600,000 in new subdivisions dotting southeastern Prince William. "We have our own little back yard here," Toni Moore, a 37-year-old hospice nurse, said of the black residents of her neighborhood, called Southbridge. The Moores are part of a wave of African Americans moving to an area just off Interstate 95, south of the Potomac Mills shopping center and north of the Quantico Marine Corps Base. How this area turned into a black community almost overnight is partly a story of how hundreds of people from near and far discovered Prince William, transforming some of the county's schools, churches, stores, demographics and even its politics. The creation of majority minority communities such as Southbridge also shows how the diversity of Washington suburbs sometimes turns up in unexpected places. There are large numbers of Koreans in Annandale, Filipinos in Manassas, Salvadorans in Langley Park, Indians in Gaithersburg and Ethiopians in South Arlington. Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/11/AR2006041101895.html