Two hundred and fifty years later, America is having a meltdown.
Politically, economically, culturally, spiritually — even historically. The sentiment is on full display at Kanawha Plaza downtown on March 28, where the third “No Kings” rally in less than a year brings out several thousand protesters. They’re angry, yet joyful. They shout, chant, dance and shiver on an unseasonably chilly Saturday afternoon in the city, with winds whipping and temperatures stuck in the upper 40s.
The messaging behind No Kings, the national protest movement that’s now considered the largest in U.S. history (an estimated 8 million people attended roughly 3,300 protests across the country in late March) is both simple and prescient.
“No Kings” protesters in downtown Richmond March 28 (Photo by Jay Paul)
“‘No Kings’ is more than just a slogan; it is the foundation our nation was built upon,” organizers explain in the movement’s “About” section online, a de facto mission statement. “Because this country does not belong to kings, dictators, or tyrants. It belongs to We the People — the people who care, who show up, and who fight for dignity, a life we can afford, and real opportunity. No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings.”
Not everyone shares that existential mantra. Depending on your political viewpoint, No Kings could be an attack on one of the greatest presidents in U.S. history, and hence America itself, or a nonviolent call to arms to restore American exceptionalism.
Flip the names and parties, and one might struggle to see the difference. Either way, the movement suggests that Americans harbor conflicting views on the semiquincentennial — the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
After eight years of planning and more than $50 million in state and private funding for hundreds of events across the commonwealth, the bigger question might be this: Is anyone in the mood for a party?
“THE MOMENT WE’RE IN highlights some things, and makes people maybe pay attention more to, ‘Who are we supposed to be as a country, and what do we stand for?’” offers Midlothian resident Jen Clayton, 56, who participated in the March 28 protest. “Are we going to accept what’s being pushed on us by this administration, or are we going to fight for something better and decide who we’re going to be as Americans? Because right now, they’re trying to establish what it means to be an American. And all the people here, and a lot of people across the country, disagree with that.”
There are two prevailing “clusters” among museumgoers and the broader public, explains Susie Wilkening, a Seattle-based consultant who specializes in audience research for the museum industry. In 2019, she conducted one of the country’s first comprehensive, pre-250 engagement surveys for Virginia Tourism Corp. She found that most respondents were either traditionalists — typically conservative, more interested in an “often celebratory approach to history; pride in the past” — or so-called “neoterics” — more progressive, liberal visitors who prefer an inclusive, “additive approach to history.”
In other words, there are “blind patriots” who want to celebrate American history and “symbolic patriots” who want to interrogate it, Wilkening’s study found.
“It’s really identity work, identity as a country. That’s why people get so emotional about how history is told,” she says.
Museums that confront the most troubling aspects of America’s history, particularly slavery and the whitewashing of the Confederacy (i.e., the Lost Cause), are often a difficult sell for traditionalists. For people “whose identity as an American is a stronger part of their identity than others,” Wilkening says, “hearing those negative pieces feels more like a threat to them.”
Understanding the split is important, especially when marketing 250th anniversary events to the broader public. For museums, it’s akin to walking a tightrope. “It’s political from the get-go,” Wilkening adds. “You can’t get around it, because if you’re ‘celebrating’ the day, that is already a political word — in terms of ‘celebrating’ versus whether you’re ‘commemorating’ versus not acknowledging it at all.”
That’s especially true when it comes to countervailing narratives around America’s founding — principally, President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 celebrations, which aim to drown out “revisionist history” and follow through on an executive order from March 2025, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”
How will VA250 events and Richmond’s inclusive approach to telling American’s story coexist with golden ballrooms, nationwide “Patriot Games,” IndyCar races in the nation’s capital and professional cage fights on the White House lawn?
For Clayton and others Richmond magazine spoke with during the March protest, the movement is part of an attempt to reclaim the narrative. Party or no, if there’s a lesson from the thousands of No Kings rallies, it might be that a growing number of Americans are no longer willing to cede their patriotism.
“That was always one of the things that bothered me, is that the MAGA movement, or the right, thought they got to own the flag, and also God, liberty and things like that,” Clayton says, dismissing the idea that American history must be told with feel-good reverence to reinforce national pride. “I love the [Virginia Museum of History & Culture]. I really do feel like they would touch on the highs and lows, and I feel like they really try to be complete and as nuanced as possible. … Do I feel like going to a party that’s going to be, frankly, blowing smoke up my a-- about what America is? Then no.”
ACROSS THE COUNTRY, there’s growing concern about the political environment and a recent decline in international visitors to the U.S. Despite a global surge in tourism in 2025, the United States saw a 5.5% decrease in travelers from abroad, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. Experts blame the dip on tightening visa restrictions, stricter immigration policies and the country’s sour political mood.
What it means for long-planned anniversary events is impossible to predict. But for Jamie Bosket, president and CEO of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, it’s about broadening the portfolio, telling “as many compelling stories as possible.”
For all the hand-wringing over who may or may not show for the birthday bash, Bosket is confident that the VMHC’s signature events will draw thousands. Richmond SailFest, which will bring a fleet of international tall ships to Dock Street Park June 12-14; IllumiNATION, a groundbreaking video art projection event at the museum June 25-28; and a six-month exhibit on immigration, “We the People: The World in Our Commonwealth,” are expected to attract roughly 150,000 visitors, Bosket says.
A digital rendering of the IllumiNATION projection art event, which will be held at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture June 25-28. (Photo courtesy Virginia Museum of History & Culture)
In many respects, the museum has already exceeded expectations. Net operating income has grown dramatically since 2019, and annual attendance has tripled in the last decade, from roughly 58,000 in 2016 to 165,000 last year.
“This institution right now is seeing attendance that is triple its historic level,” Bosket says, “and I can tell you with certainty, there is no other museum in our peer set in the country that is seeing that.”
How, exactly? Bosket says it’s the manifestation of a nearly decade-long “journey of reimagination” that started in earnest in 2017. The museum off Arthur Ashe Boulevard began planning a $30 million renovation (completed in 2022) and convened with other museums and cultural institutions in the commonwealth to prepare for the semiquincentennial. The museum also launched one of the largest statewide civics education programs in Virginia history.
The objective? To open the museum to more stories, more perspectives, more people.
Jamie Bosket, president and CEO of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture (Photo by Carlos Bernate)
“The American journey is not done, but it doesn’t have to be either/or,” Bosket explains, pointing to VMHC’s guiding mission for the 250th. “We settled on three things: One, that this is more about world-changing ideas than just a war; that this is more about an American journey than just a point in time; and that for this commemoration to be as successful as possible, everyone needs to see their connection to it.”
Since Richmond’s Confederate monuments came down in 2020, during a summer of protest after George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis, the city’s cultural institutions have played a leading role in that reconnection — particularly The Valentine museum, under the leadership of the late Bill Martin and the current interim director, Meg Hughes, which prominently featured exhibits on the Lost Cause and racist statuary created by the museum’s namesake sculptor, Edward Valentine.
One of Valentine’s most famous works, a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis that stood on Monument Avenue for more than a century, was pulled to the ground and defaced by protestors in 2020. Two years later, The Valentine brought the soiled sculpture back to the museum and put it on display.
The Valentine has excelled at telling stories and offering tours of the city that are often unexpected. For the semiquincentennial, the museum’s flagship exhibit, “Dissent! Liberty & Loyalty in Richmond,” takes a deeper look at the city’s British loyalists, complete with AI-generated images of historical figures such as Nat Turner.
“Who knew that history could become so charged?” Hughes says of the current political moment. “Ultimately, education is the most important thing that we do. We use historic evidence to tell stories about Richmond that are complicated and not always nice and neat, but that’s our role as a history museum.”
A more inclusive approach, and one that focuses on America’s still-evolving story, has helped Virginia stay above the political fray, says Christy Coleman, executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation in Williamsburg.
“I think that VA250 is ahead of the curve, and has been for a couple of years, while the national celebrations, commemorations, have floundered from day one,” says Coleman, who spent more than a decade leading Richmond’s American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar and later the American Civil War Museum. “The reason why we have been successful in Virginia in advancing a conversation about the meaning of this is we committed ourselves from the beginning to the idea of an ‘unfinished nation.’”
Meanwhile, Richmond has undergone a transformation in the years following the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and emancipation (2011-15), Coleman says.
“Richmond, just a decade ago, was wrapping up its commemoration of the Civil War and emancipation, and that opened the door to some extraordinary conversations about what was missing from our cultural landscape,” she says. “And so, 10 years later, we are seeing those things come to fruition. It’s a beautiful thing.”
AFTER YEARS OF PLANNING, two of those missing pieces finally opened this spring: the Shockoe Institute, an interactive center devoted to telling the story of slavery in Richmond, and The JXN Project’s Skipwith-Roper Cottage and headquarters facility on Bates Street, near Gilpin Court and Shockoe Hill Cemetery.
In a city that has long struggled to come to grips with its oppressive history — from 1830 to 1865, the domestic slave trade powered half of Richmond’s economy — the Shockoe Institute is a landmark achievement.
With an $11 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, the institute consumes roughly 12,000 square feet in Main Street Station’s former train shed. Between 15th and 17th streets in Shockoe Bottom, it sits atop what used to be Shockoe Creek, home to several large auction houses in the 1800s, including the infamous Lumpkin’s Jail, and adjacent to the only recently memorialized Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground.
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The Shockoe Institute consumes roughly 12,000 square feet of the Main Street Station train shed. (Photo courtesy Shockoe Institute)
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The Shockoe Institute's inaugural exhibit, "Expanding Freedom," opened to the public in April. (Photo courtesy Shockoe Institute)
In the institute’s weaving, interactive exhibit, “Expanding Freedom,” visitors navigate the path thousands of enslaved families took through Richmond to the sounds of trickling water. There are testimonials, including a recorded interview from 1937 with a former enslaved person, Fannie Berry, and jarring reminders of the breadth and scope of America’s original sin (by 1790, 39% of Virginia’s population was enslaved). Explanations of how Virginia codified racial slavery in 1705, and later the deeply conflicted U.S. Constitution, are presented in painstaking detail.
Marland Buckner, president and CEO of the Shockoe Institute (Photo courtesy Shockoe Institute)
An observation from the institute’s president and CEO, Marland Buckner, greets visitors, serving as a moral compass: “Americans gave the world the language needed to expand human freedom. They designed a political system that did the opposite.”
“If we’re going to make the most of the 250th, then as a people we’re going to have to be able to figure out how to live with that,” Buckner says. “It’s OK to feel uncomfortable. It’s OK not to like it. It’s OK to hate it. What’s not OK is to weaponize it any direction that doesn’t move our civic life forward. If you weaponize these lessons, then you are not doing the work that’s necessary to improve our civic life.”
This is the primary purpose of the Shockoe Institute, Buckner says: to educate, interrogate and help visitors explore what should come next.
“The story of America, as I said at the very, very beginning, is the struggle to expand human freedom,” Buckner says. “It’s what makes America unique in the world. It’s why we’re an aspirational nation.”
NO ONE CAPTURES THAT ASPIRATION quite like Abraham Peyton Skipwith, the first known Black homeowner in what would eventually become Jackson Ward. Skipwith accumulated considerable wealth after working as an enslaved laborer and later a local merchant.
In 1789, he purchased his own freedom. Four years later, he built a three-story gambrel roof cottage on what is now West Duval Street. And, as happened to so many Black Richmonders, his property was eventually taken by the government.
In the mid-1950s, the cottage was relocated to Goochland County after the construction of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, now Interstate 95. The new federal freeway split Jackson Ward, displacing 7,000 Black Richmonders.
“Skipwith is a founding father. You haven’t ever heard anything about him,” says Sesha Joi Moon, co-founder of The JXN Project, which launched in 2021 to capture “the pivotal role of Jackson Ward in the Black American experience.”
The Jackson Ward district was created by Richmond’s all-white City Council after the Civil War in an attempt to isolate and disenfranchise Black families. The ward, however, defiantly morphed into an economic powerhouse known as “Black Wall Street.”
“I think this is important because one, it’s disruptive. It reminds that Black people existed, Indigenous people existed, women existed, and that we were foundational to the founding of the country,” Moon says. “No. 2, it forces us to reckon with … Blackness isn’t a monolith. This is a moment that lets you know that some people were enslaved on plantations, some people were working in plants, some people were working as clerks, some people were having to negotiate being fully Black.”
Over the past six years, Moon and her sister, Enjoli, spearheaded the fundraising and construction of the replica Skipwith Cottage and accompanying JXN Haus as a museum and community center of sorts. The first $5.68 million phase was recently completed, and fundraising has already begun for the second and final $3.5 million phase, which includes a coworking space. There’s a quarter-acre garden and a rooftop patio featuring a big-screen TV, which is also available for rent.
IN THE LAST 50 YEARS OR SO, Coleman of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation says, there’s been a “sustained conversation about what we haven’t gotten right, where we continue to have fallen short, taking a look at the sins of the nation.” This more academic approach, which started after the bicentennial celebrations in 1976, isn’t about reopening old wounds, she says. “It was to acknowledge that the wound was still there and still very present. So how do we, as Americans, really heal something if we can’t look at it, if we can’t inspect it and find the solutions?”
Wilkening, the museum consultant, says annual surveys show the “prevailing national sentiment is moving toward inclusion every year.”
“They want to be told the truth about the past,” she says of museumgoers. “The majority of liberals want inclusive content. The majority of moderates want inclusive content. The majority of conservatives want inclusive content in museums.”
That Richmond has emerged as a leader in racial introspection, just in time for the 250th anniversary, is a sign of maturation and growth, says the Rev. Ben Campbell, pastoral associate at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and author of “Richmond’s Unhealed History.”
Regardless of who shows up on July Fourth, at long last Richmond is finally grappling with its demons and searching for a path forward.
“We are facing the fact that telling the truth about our history and race is not something negative, but opens up the continuing possibility of our nation being who we always wanted to be,” Campbell says. “We are actively encouraging and supporting racial diversity and the best visions of our ancestors, the principles on which the nation was based, many of which were articulated here. That’s who Virginia is at the moment. And it’s where one would want to be, 250 years into this thing.”
For a list of events related to the America 250 commemoration, visit richmondmag.com/250events. To learn more about the Richmond region’s Revolutionary War figures, places and stories, visit richmondmag.com/america250.
