You’re standing in Jackson Ward-not just any neighborhood, but the heartbeat of Black Richmond for generations. They called this place “Black Wall Street of America,” and, for good reason, it pulsed with business deals, legendary music, and more than a little bit of hard-earned swagger. If you listen closely, you can almost feel the buzz on The Deuce-Second Street-where Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and the rest of the Chitlin’ Circuit greats played the Hippodrome. Safe bet their audience included everyone from the city’s business giants to working folks looking to blow off steam after a tough week.
Now, here’s where things really start to kick. After the Civil War, free Black people and newly emancipated Virginians joined forces here, building a dense network of churches, banks, restaurants, and newspapers-whole blocks owned and operated by Black families who’d had enough of being locked out of the city’s power. Maggie L. Walker, who lived nearby, didn’t just run a bank out of Jackson Ward-she was the first American woman, of any race, to start and run a bank. And she managed all this while dealing with serious mobility challenges. Her neighborhood comrades included John Mitchell Jr., crusading newspaper editor; Giles B. Jackson, first Black lawyer to argue before Virginia’s Supreme Court, and a whole cast of civic powerhouses.
But Jackson Ward wasn’t just about the boardrooms and newspapers. This was also Richmond’s epicenter for Black religious life. Churches like Sixth Mount Zion, which survived demolition by freeway thanks to some quiet hallway negotiations in City Hall, kept the spiritual fires burning-quite literally, as highways and “urban renewal” projects wiped out street after street.
Urban progress, as you might guess, came with a price tag. Starting in the 1940s, leaders with little connection to this community decided whole blocks needed flattening to make way for freeways and fresh civic projects. Communities that had spent decades, sometimes generations, growing roots were bulldozed. It was a little like setting up a jigsaw puzzle, then deciding to dump half the pieces. The numbers: in the 1950s alone, around 4,700 units of housing were demolished, replaced with about a third as many new apartments. That’s a lot of families scrambling for somewhere to sleep. Add in real estate blockbusting, churches being uprooted, and the split caused by the interstate-well, you get the idea. Still, the Ward refused to die.
By the 1970s and 80s, folks started to realize what was slipping away. Historic houses began to get some love-thanks in part to tax breaks-and new waves of residents and entrepreneurs took an interest. If you’re around on a first Friday, Jackson Ward hums with art, music, barbecue smoke, and debates over gentrification that come with every revived city neighborhood. And quirks? In 2014, heavy metal band GWAR opened GwarBar down the street-good for metal fans and anyone who likes a strong drink with a creative garnish.
From clipped Italianate cottages to the grand Greek Revival homes, the Ward’s architecture has its own tales to tell. And hidden among these streets, the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground rests-an astonishing 22,000 people interred, making it one of America’s largest burial grounds for the enslaved and free people of color.
Alright, ready to swap music legends for neon lights
