Image courtesy University of California Press
Unlike traditional guidebooks, which direct tourists to popular historic sites, museums, outdoor activities and eateries, “A People’s Guide to Richmond and Central Virginia” takes readers on a sociological tour of the region, connecting an unvarnished view of the past with present-day realities of the city. Its themes include the enslavement of Black people and destruction of traditionally Black neighborhoods, the extermination of indigenous communities, the resurgence of Black culture and growing recognition of LGBTQ artists and activists.
The authors’ interdisciplinary approach included reviewing existing sources, extensive research, interviews and an advisory board. They note their book is, “by its nature, selective and incomplete. … We have tried to err on the side of including stories and sites we believe to be lesser known, both in public memory and in the physical landscape.”
This excerpt shares a sample of the detailed descriptions of sites both past and present. The book also offers personal reflections from community members, recommendations for additional reading, and themed tours such as “Black Freedom” and “Queer Cultures & Histories.”
Excerpted by permission of the University of California Press
A People’s Guide features more than 120 sites where ordinary people assert their humanity and dignity while organizing their communities, as well as sites where powerholders have worked to restrain those actions. The guide immerses readers in place-specific sites and landscapes of everyday struggle. It centers an inclusive and expansive historical and contemporary regional geography by archiving stories and spaces often overlooked in traditional guidebooks, textbooks, and conventional memorialization efforts. These histories of community resistance and resilience inscribed in the region’s landscape work to correct an erroneous narrative — that elites make history worth knowing and sites worth visiting — by showing how ordinary people come together to create more equitable futures. The guide, alongside multiple interventions from local activists, artists, community members, and scholars, pushes us to examine what we think we know about the spaces we navigate and to question our assumptions about the origins, experiences, and power relations of institutional and community life in Richmond and Central Virginia.
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Tobacco factory workers in Richmond, circa 1900 (Photo courtesy Cook Collection, The Valentine)
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This former tobacco factory has been renovated into luxury lofts. (Photo by Kim Lee Schmidt)
DOWNTOWN RICHMOND
Walker and Harris Tobacco Factory
19th and E. Cary Streets
On February 25, 1852, Jordan Hatcher, a seventeen-year-old enslaved person, arrived at the Walker and Harris Tobacco Factory to complete his daily work as a stemmer, someone who strips tobacco leaves from their stems. This kind of urban work was typical for enslaved people living in Richmond. Enslavers who lived elsewhere could find a use for laborers not needed on farms and plantations, and industrialists eagerly paid enslavers a smaller wage for the work of enslaved people than they paid their white laborers. William Jackson, a nineteen-year-old white overseer, chastised Hatcher for what he deemed poor work and began to whip him. Hatcher eventually picked up an iron poker and struck Jackson on the head with it. What first seemed like a mild wound worsened. Hatcher had fractured Jackson’s skull. After an unsuccessful surgery, Jackson died. Authorities found Hatcher hiding nearby, jailed him, and charged him with murder. A court found Hatcher guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging.
Prior to his execution date, sixty prominent Richmond citizens petitioned Governor Joseph Johnson for clemency on Hatcher’s behalf, emphasizing that Hatcher had killed Jackson without premeditation and without an intention to kill him. At the same time, tobacco manufacturers cited a “growing spirit of insubordination” among enslaved workers and urged the governor to carry out the sentence, noting that examples must be made of such offenders.
Governor Johnson commuted Hatcher’s sentence, instead ordering him to be sold and transported out of the U.S. This decision was unusual and challenged the dominant view of what enslavers thought enslaved people deserved for killing an overseer, as evidenced by the two thousand-strong crowd of white Richmonders who gathered near City Hall on the evening of May 7 to protest the governor’s decision. The crowd threw stones at the governor’s residence, threatened to break down his door, and accused him of being a Northern abolitionist. In the aftermath, the General Assembly attempted but failed to pass laws restricting the movement of enslaved people around the city. On June 16, enslaver Garland Ware purchased Jordan Hatcher for transport out of the U.S. Nothing more is known about Hatcher.
This incident illustrates the ways in which the enslaved negotiated survival amidst horrific circumstances, as well as the fact that white Richmonders did not hold monolithic views in relation to punishment for self-defense. The factory was destroyed by fire in 1865, but other factories rose in its place. Today, those factories have been converted into luxury residential spaces.
Children leaving Navy Hill School days before its destruction in 1965 (Photo by Carl Lynn courtesy Richmond-Times Dispatch Photograph Collection, The Valentine)
NORTHSIDE RICHMOND
Navy Hill School (former)
E. Duval Street at Navy Hill Drive
In the early nineteenth century, private developers created the Navy Hill neighborhood north of downtown, naming it after a proposed War of 1812 memorial that never materialized. Originally settled by German immigrants, the neighborhood was almost exclusively populated by African Americans by the twentieth century. It became a center of mutual aid, education, and empowerment, which included one of the most prestigious early schools for Black children. Navy Hill School opened in 1866 and operated under the protection of local Black militias, as local whites had set fire to Fifth Street Baptist Church, just around the corner, a few months earlier out of resentment over the community’s growth. Future prominent Black citizens, like businesswoman and civil rights leader Maggie Walker and Richmond Planet editor John Mitchell Jr., attended this school as children. Because of its proximity to downtown and its occupancy by Black citizens, the area faced continual threats of destruction due to various urban renewal schemes.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the building of Interstate 95 and other development completely destroyed Navy Hill, displacing over a thousand people. Navy Hill School closed suddenly in 1965, and that location became an interstate on-ramp. The Richmond Coliseum, a 13,000-person arena that operated between 1971 and 2019, and the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park, which opened in 1995, occupy much of the former neighborhood.
In the late 2010s, the city proposed the controversial Navy Hill Development Project, a $1.5 billion project that included the building of a much larger arena to replace the now defunct Coliseum. Promotional material for the project heavily connected it to the history of Navy Hill, claiming the project would bring back a “shattered” neighborhood “on the verge of being forgotten.” Promoters utilized false nostalgia to ignore the fact that the project did not center working-class African American citizens, who had made up the core of the neighborhood when their homes and community spaces were obliterated by city building projects in the mid-twentieth century. It also spoke of neighborhood revitalization when there was no neighborhood to revitalize, as it was completely destroyed decades ago. ...
The project failed to meet the city’s own guidelines for inclusion of affordable housing units for development projects on city property. A groundswell of grassroots activism killed the proposal in early 2020.
Former site of Phoenix Rising Bookstore (Photo by Kim Lee Schmidt)
THE FAN AND WEST END
Phoenix Rising (former)
19 N. Belmont Avenue
Phoenix Rising opened in 1993 as an independent bookstore carrying LGBTQ-themed books, magazines, and media near Richmond’s Carytown shopping corridor. It followed a rich tradition of Richmond bookstores that centered lesbian and gay community-building. The first, Labrys Books, opened at 8 N. Allen Avenue in 1978; it sold books by and for women. When it closed in 1981, Womensbooks opened as a cooperative bookstore, initially operating out of the YWCA on N. 5th Street. When it closed in 1993, Phoenix Rising continued the tradition of cultivating space for LGBTQ communities. As an LGBTQ community hub, it designated space for patrons to place information related to local LGBTO activities and connections. ...
At a time when few LGBTQ gathering spaces outside of nightlife venues existed in the city, Phoenix Rising provided a platform to raise awareness and galvanize action around gay and lesbian issues like unjust divorce and custody laws. Phoenix Rising closed in the mid-2010s, as online sales hammered many bookstores and retail rental costs soared. Patrons lost a vital community gathering space, although other LGBTO spaces in the city continue to flourish.
To Visit Nearby
MULBERRY HOUSE, 2701-2703 W. Grace Street. In the early 1970s, a group of lesbian and gay Richmonders lived communally here and cultivated close kinship ties at a time when many gay men and lesbians were closeted or shunned by their families. The house is now a private home.
DIVERSITY THRIFT at 1407 Sherwood Avenue. Founded in 1999, it is part of Diversity Richmond, an organization that has raised over one million dollars for local LGBTQ support organizations.
SOUTHSIDE RICHMOND
Sacred Heart Catholic Church / Iglesia del Sagrado Corazon
1400 Perry Street
Sacred Heart Catholic Church (Photo by Justin Vaughan)
On July 29, 1999, Father Ricardo Seidel held the city’s first official Spanish-language masses at Sacred Heart and St. Augustine’s Catholic Churches. Although he died only weeks later, his work created an inclusive space where Latinos could gather in community to worship. Born in Peru, he came to Richmond because he felt led to serve here. Seidel advocated for the Latino community throughout Virginia and his commitment to Latino parishioners made a lasting impact. Today, 90 percent of Sacred Heart’s members are Latino. Located in a historically African American neighborhood, the church welcomes a diverse group of worshippers and continues to expand at a time when most city churches are experiencing shrinking membership rolls. ...
Sacred Heart serves over 1,200 families with six weekly masses, four in Spanish and two in English. It also hosts a number of quinceañeras each month, an important cultural tradition in many Latino communities. Additionally, it supports community engagement efforts and service to Latino immigrant communities through the neighboring Sacred Heart Center. Both the church and the center serve as critical spaces for Latino communities to gather and organize, which is especially important given the rapid growth of these communities in the Richmond area.
Richmond Reads
Looking to pair the historical view of “A People’s Guide” with a more traditional guidebook? Consider these two recent releases.
“Really Richmond – A City Guide” by Elizabeth Cogar
Find the updated second edition at Mongrel, Shelf Life Books, Papeterie, The Shops at 5807 Patterson, Quirk Hotel, Shore Dog Cafe and online. $18.99
“100 Things to Do in Richmond Before You Die” by Annie Tobey
Available at Fountain Books, Alchemists, Lewis Ginter Garden Shop, Paper Tiger, Outpost Richmond, Final Gravity, Buskey and Courthouse Creek cideries and more. Reedy Press. $18
