Here’s something that might surprise you: In a city that once served as the capital of the Confederacy, there’s a neighborhood that became one of America’s most prosperous Black communities during the Jim Crow era. That’s the historic neighborhood of Jackson Ward, and despite the systems that were set up to disenfranchise Black Americans, the people of this community didn’t just survive— they thrived, earning nicknames like the “Harlem of the South” and “Black Wall Street.”
Today, you can walk these same streets and experience the living history of a community that refused to be diminished.
The Paradox of Richmond
Let’s address the elephant in the room. Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy, a city built on the institution of slavery. (And, quite frankly, when you ask some locals today, they will tell you that the Confederacy has never left.) But despite all of that, the Black people here have leaned into what they champion as “excellence”—a thread that links them directly to the resilience of their ancestors.
In 2020, following protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder, Richmond removed all ten of its Confederate statues that had stood for over a century around the city, including the monuments on Monument Avenue. (For context, Monument Avenue is a historic district where mansions and stylish row houses are surrounded by tree-lined streets. A very posh neighborhood.) The American Civil War Museum at Historic Tredegar, near Brown’s Island, contextualizes this complex history—while the removed monuments themselves are now in the custody of the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia…