In the middle of Windom Road in North Brentwood, near the intersection of 39th Place, a metal barrier stretches across the street.

It doesn’t look like much. The only thing acknowledging its existence is an unexplained thin spot in the road on some maps.

But when the barrier was put up in 1957, it was as forbidding as a garrison wall, dividing the white community of Brentwood from the Black community of North Brentwood.

The barrier was part of a larger effort in mid-century America to maintain segregation by making some white areas so-called sundown towns, where African Americans were at risk of violence if they stayed after sundown.

The restrictions began in the 1920s and 1930s, and the walls came later. A gray brick wall, called Hall’s Hill Wall, was built in Arlington County in the 1930s, and other “segregation walls” or “race walls” can be found in cities such as Miami, Detroit, Atlanta and Fort Worth.

In his book “Sundown Towns,” historian James Loewen writes about the North Brentwood barrier that he was “struck by the absence of any social class difference between homes on both sides of the barrier,” but a longtime resident told him stories of white residents, including children, throwing things and using racial slurs at Black residents who came too close to the dividing line.

In recent years, Brentwood and North Brentwood have worked together to memorialize the history behind the barrier. In January, they chose a Washington-area artist to develop a piece of public art for the upcoming Windom Road Historic Barrier Park, and they’ll work with residents in the coming months on the design.

The current plan calls for removing the barrier but keeping the street closed to traffic, with art and historical markers to explain the history. The barrier will be gone, but never forgotten.

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