Jackson Ward - Richmond, VA

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Title

Jackson Ward - Richmond, VA

Description

Richmond at the turn of the 20th century had one of the nation’s most thriving Black business communities. The hub of this activity was Jackson Ward with its fraternal organizations, banks, insurance companies, and other institutions, all founded and run by Black Americans. The neighborhood developed before the Civil War and originally was populated primarily by citizens of German and Jewish descent but with a sizable free Black American population. After the war, Jackson Ward gradually became predominantly Black. Some scholars attribute this to white political forces only allowing blacks to live in a single voting district to dilute their political power.

Urban renewal projects in the 1950s devastated Jackson Ward. City and state officials designed the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike (now part of I-95) to pass through Jackson Ward, bisecting the neighborhood and destroying historic structures. Later, desegregation and white flight saw blacks moving out of Jackson Ward. As buildings began to deteriorate, the area was further targeted for new development such as federal housing projects, and the City Coliseum that opened in 1970.

Jackson Ward and Its Black Wall Street (U.S. National Park Service), n.d.

Gerena, C. (2004). Urban Entrepeneurs: The Origins of Black Business Districts in Durham, Richmond, and Washington, D.C. Economic History. 36-39.

Jackson Ward Historic District | VCU Libraries Digital Collections. (n.d.). Retrieved December 6, 2021.

Spraker, R. (2017). What’s Haunting Jackson Ward? Race, Space, and Environmental Violence. VCU Scholars Compass.

Bowen, D. S. (2003). The Transformation of Richmond's Historic African American Commercial Corridor. Southeastern Geographer, 43(2), 260–278.

Lauck, J. (2016). From the Ashes of Glory: The Rise and Fall of Jackson Ward. The Cupola.

Minutes of the Meeting of the State Highway. (1958). Retrieved December 6, 2021.

Todd, Tim, Let Us Put Our Money Together: The Founding of America’s First Black Banks (Kansas City, MO: The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 2019), accessed January 13, 2022,