Gabriel's rebellion, Maggie Walker's bank, Jackson Ward and Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue.
Gabriel
In the spring and summer of 1800, an enslaved man named Gabriel planned a revolt to end slavery in Virginia. On August 30, the day of the attack, heavy rain flooded Richmond's streets and the creeks around it, and the plan was betrayed. Gabriel, his two brothers and 23 others were hanged. On August 30, 2007, Governor Tim Kaine informally pardoned them, saying Gabriel's cause, the end of slavery and the furtherance of equality of all people, had prevailed in the light of history.
Jackson Ward
After the Civil War, Jackson Ward grew into such a center of Black business that it was called the Black Wall Street of America, and its theaters and clubs on 2nd Street, the Hippodrome among them, earned it the name Harlem of the South, with Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald on its stages. A statue of the dancer Bill Bojangles Robinson dancing on a staircase stands at its center.
In 1958 the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, now part of I-95, opened straight through the neighborhood, destroying about 1,000 homes and cutting a block-wide canyon through its historic center.
Maggie L. Walker
Maggie L. Walker saved the Independent Order of St. Luke from collapse, started its newspaper, the St. Luke Herald, in 1902 and in 1903 chartered the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, becoming the first African American woman to charter a bank in the United States. Her Jackson Ward home is now a National Park Service site, and in 2017 Richmond unveiled a bronze statue of her, checkbook in hand.
Ashe And Wilder
Arthur Ashe grew up at Brookfield Park, Richmond's largest public playground for Black residents, at a time when the city's indoor courts were closed to Black players. He won the first US Open of the Open Era in 1968 and Wimbledon in 1975, and the city later put his statue on Monument Avenue, a street built for Confederate memorials.
Douglas Wilder was born in 1931 in the segregated Church Hill neighborhood. On November 8, 1989, he was elected governor of Virginia, the first African American elected governor of any US state, and he later became Richmond's first directly elected mayor in sixty years.
Black Richmond Today
From Jackson Ward to Church Hill, Richmond's Black history is written into its streets, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday Richmond.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Richmond on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
Ironwork on rowhouses in the Jackson Ward Historic District. Photo: Mrssisaithong, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons A fish market in the Jackson Ward Historic District. Photo: Mrssisaithong, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons