Cornelius Mimms (second from left) among a 1911 “Gathering of Attorneys” at Chesterfield County Courthouse
Cornelius Mimms was Chesterfield County’s first Black supervisor, but you’d be hard-pressed to find him within a 1911 photograph displayed at the Chesterfield County Museum without some help.
Standing in the back row of the “Gathering of Attorneys” and apart from the collection of serious-faced, well-dressed white men arranged before the county courthouse is Mimms, identified as a lawyer.
Mimms represented Chesterfield’s Midlothian District. He was the first Black man elected to the Board of Supervisors, serving two-year terms in 1881, 1887 and 1891. He also was the county’s supervisor of roads and supervisor for the poor. The board wouldn’t see another Black supervisor until Jesse Mays in 1984.
Born in 1857, Mimms was the first of three sons raised by Cornelius and Lucinda Mimms, free Blacks living in Goochland County. He would go on to establish a 46-year-long general law practice in Manchester, an independent city with its own courthouse until its 1910 merger with Richmond.
During the early 1890s, Mimms provided legal counsel for the Virginia Industrial Mercantile Building & Loan Association. This organization was founded by Black educator and businessman James H. Blackwell, who assisted in the formation of the curriculum for Manchester’s first Black high school. The school was later named for Blackwell, as was the surrounding neighborhood.
Cornelius Mimms
In addition to his professional career, Mimms built a life of family and faith with his wife, Lula Miller Mimms, and their six children. They lived in a two-story gable-roofed house at 13864 Midlothian Turnpike “said to be constructed of logs,” according to Jeffrey O’Dell’s survey of Chesterfield County’s historic structures and sites.
For 55 years, Mimms also clerked for the oldest Black church in the county, First Baptist Church Midlothian, and for 50 years he was superintendent of its Sunday school. Mimms in 1925 helped his son Edward to establish a Richmond funeral home that today is directed by great-granddaughter Mia Frances Mimms.
The backdrop for Mimms’ electoral success and his family’s lives reflects the tumultuous period of Civil War and Reconstruction.
The Virginia General Assembly on Feb. 10, 1876, recognized the Richmond Institute, a Black educational center housed in the former United States Hotel in Shockoe where Mimms earned a teaching degree. The school originated in 1867 through the considerable efforts of the American Baptist Home Mission Society and the federal Freedmen’s Bureau. The project originated in the buildings of the pre-liberation “Hell’s Half Acre” operated by slave trader Robert Lumpkin. The staff and students raised funds and undertook repairs for the old hotel and eventually received its charter. The school eventually evolved into Virginia Union University.
Also in 1876, the Virginia Constitutional Convention, following the directives of Congress, convened. Federal judge and “Radical Republican” John Curtiss Underwood chaired the convention and favored universal suffrage for white and Black men — and white women. The far-reaching “Underwood Constitution,” implemented with great controversy, gave voting rights to white and Black men but not women. The document supported a public education system, redistributed taxes and made discrimination in jury selection illegal.
The Readjuster Party (1879-83), led by the mercurial William Mahone, a former Confederate general and dynamic railroad executive, also arose in Virginia during this period.
The Readjusters advocated for a “readjustment” of the state’s pre-Civil War public debt — proposing a slower rate of repayment at a lower rate of interest. Virginia could then afford needed improvements to public education and infrastructure.
The party encouraged cross-racial fusion voting and through patronage placed Blacks into state offices. It’s unclear whether Mimms’ political involvement stemmed from Readjuster connections.
Readjusters were elected governor, to both U.S. Senate seats and to six of the state’s 10 seats in Congress. Three state senators and 11 delegates were Black.
Among their achievements, the Readjusters organized Black institutions of higher learning, including the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (later Virginia State University) near Petersburg.
John Mercer Langston, born in Louisa County as a free Black man of mixed race and a graduate of Oberlin College, was appointed as Virginia Normal’s president. He’d already founded the Howard University School of Law, from which Mimms graduated.
Langston, great uncle of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, in 1888 became Virginia’s first Black representative to Congress, though he’d spend 18 months demonstrating that he’d won the seat. He ultimately served only six months of his term and lost his next election due to a shift in Virginia’s politics.
The Readjusters large-ly got what they wanted without quite knowing what to do next. This, paired with Mahone’s temperament and the vehement enmity of their political rivals, caused the party’s almost-overnight collapse. Prior to a critical election, a street fracas in Danville that left five dead was blamed on the Readjusters for encouraging Blacks not to show deference to whites.
Following this came the inexorable strengthening of racist policies and, by 1902, the enshrining of Jim Crow into the Constitution of Virginia.
When Mimms died at age 74 on June 30, 1932, his motto was inscribed on his headstone in the First Baptist Church of Midlothian’s cemetery: “We Must Follow The Right Paths To Arrive At The Right Place.”
In Mimms’ honor, Chesterfield on Dec. 17, 2002, changed the name of West Krause Road on the county government complex. The Mimms Drive dedication plaque extolls him as “a man who took the right road, a friend, a neighbor, a husband and father, loved by all.”
In the fall of 2016, the Chesterfield Historical Society’s African American History Committee presented a temporary Mimms exhibit at the Chesterfield County Museum. In October 2023, the historical society unveiled the county museum’s first permanent African American exhibit, titled “Cornelius Mimms — A Trailblazer.”
Flashback gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Liessvan der Linden-Brusse of the Chesterfield Historical Society of Virginia, Chesterfield County Museum curator Pat Roble and Audrey Ross, Midlothian Baptist’s historian and a member of the historical society’s African American History Committee.
Never miss a Sunday Story: Sign up for the newsletter, and we’ll drop a fresh read into your inbox at the start of each week. To keep up with the latest posts, search for the hashtag #SundayStory on Facebook and Instagram.
