Jackson Ward
Encyclopedia
Jackson Ward is a historically African-American neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

, USA. It is located less than a mile from the Virginia State Capitol
Virginia State Capitol
The Virginia State Capitol is the seat of state government in the Commonwealth of Virginia, located in Richmond, the third capital of Virginia. It houses the oldest legislative body in the United States, the Virginia General Assembly...

. It sits to the west of Court End
Court End
thumb|250px|right|1000 block E. Clay StreetCourt End is a neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia that sits to the north of the Capitol Square and East Broad Street...

.

Center of black commerce, entertainment and religion

After the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, previously free blacks joined freed slaves and their descendants and created a thriving African-American business community, and became known as the "Black Wall Street of America." Leaders included such influential people as John Mitchell, Jr.
John Mitchell, Jr. (editor)
John Mitchell, Jr. was an African American businessman, politician, and newspaper editor.Mitchell was a civic leader and civil rights activist in Richmond, Virginia’s Jackson Ward community, a neighborhood of free African Americans and freed slaves which became known as the “Black Wall Street of...

, editor of the Richmond Planet, an African American newspaper, and Maggie L. Walker
Maggie L. Walker
Maggie Lena Walker was an African American teacher and businesswoman. Walker was the first African American female bank president and the first woman to charter a bank in the United States. As a leader, she achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for...

. Ms. Walker was the first woman to charter and serve as president of an American bank, all the more remarkable an accomplishment as she was both African-American and was mobility-impaired. The Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site
Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site
The Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Site located at 110½ E. Leigh Street in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. The site was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1975. The National Historic...

 at her former Jackson Ward home is operated by the National Park Service
National Park Service
The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...

. The house was designated a National Historic Site
National Historic Sites (United States)
National Historic Sites are protected areas of national historic significance in the United States. A National Historic Site usually contains a single historical feature directly associated with its subject...

 in 1978 and was opened as a museum in 1985. The center of the neighborhood is dominated by the former Armstrong High School
Armstrong High School (Richmond, Virginia)
Armstrong High School, part of the Richmond Public Schools system, is a high school located in Richmond, Virginia, with grades 9-12.Known at first as the Richmond Colored Normal School, Armstrong was the first public school in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, for African American...

, now the Richmond Public Schools
Richmond Public Schools
This school division contains public schools serving the independent city of Richmond, Virginia. It is occasionally described locally as Richmond City Public Schools to emphasize its connection to the independent city rather than the Richmond-Petersburg region at large or the rural Richmond County...

 Adult Career Development Center. Armstrong's sports field is now Abner Clay Park, which has a bandstand, football field, basketball court and tennis facilities.

Notable historic churches in Jackson Ward include the Third Street Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Hood Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church, Ebenezer Baptist Church and Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church. Sixth Mount Zion is known as the home of African-American evangelist John Jasper, whose famous "Sun Do Move" sermon brought him fame http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/vbha/6th4.html. Notable residents included Bishop F. M. Whittle, Addolph Dill and Max Robinson
Max Robinson
Max Robinson was an American broadcast journalist, and ABC News World News Tonight co-anchor. He was the first African American broadcast network news anchor in the United States and one of the first television journalists to die of AIDS...

 and brother Randall Robinson
Randall Robinson
Randall Robinson is an African-American lawyer, author and activist, noted as the founder of TransAfrica. He is known particularly for his impassioned opposition to South African apartheid, and for his advocacy on behalf of Haitian immigrants and Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.-Early...

. Early on, the neighborhood held a mix of German, Jewish, English and African American residents building in the Greek Revival and Italianate styles
Italianate architecture
The Italianate style of architecture was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. In the Italianate style, the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian Renaissance architecture, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and...

.

As a center for both black commerce
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...

 and entertainment
Entertainment
Entertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreation...

, Jackson Ward was also called the "Harlem of the South". Venues there were frequented by the likes of Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...

, Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...

, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne
Lena Horne
Lena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...

, Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....

, Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...

, Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...

 and James Brown. Jackson Ward is home to the historic Hippodrome Theater. Robinson's statue is at the center of the neighborhood at the intersection of Chamberlayne Parkway and West Leigh Street.

Decline, renewal

After desegregation, as black Virginians became more widely integrated into Richmond's other business and residential areas, Jackson Ward's role as a center of black commerce and entertainment declined. In addition, during the construction of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike
Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike
The Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike was a toll road located in the Richmond-Petersburg region of central Virginia, USA.After World War II, major traffic congestion occurred in the area around Richmond and Petersburg along U.S. Route 1 and U.S. Route 301...

 in the 1950s, Jackson Ward was split in two, much to the detriment of the neighborhood. Like most older urban neighborhoods of a similar era, the housing stock of Jackson Ward deteriorated as absentee landlords took over from single family households.

But in the last quarter of the 20th century, investment in the housing stock increased. The National Park Service assisted in the process by restoration of the Maggie L. Walker
Maggie L. Walker
Maggie Lena Walker was an African American teacher and businesswoman. Walker was the first African American female bank president and the first woman to charter a bank in the United States. As a leader, she achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for...

 house and the listing of the neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

. Subsequently, the neighborhood became a Richmond Old and Historic District
Historic district
A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries, historic districts receive legal protection from development....

. In the 1980s, historic tax credits by the federal government aided the restoration of dozens of houses on Leigh, Marshall and Clay Streets.

City officials hoped that construction of the Greater Richmond Convention Center and Visitors Bureau at the eastern edge of Jackson Ward would bring renewed vitality to the neighborhood. However, the construction of the convention center destroyed a number of historic houses, and separated it from much of downtown. Vacant and substandard houses in the neighborhood have been targeted in Richmond's Neighborhoods in Bloom program.

In some areas, the progress of renovation has been slow, most notably with the First Virginia Volunteers Battalion Armory, best known as the Leigh Street Armory. It is owned by the city, but remains empty http://www.richmondneighborhoods.org/Armory.html.

Some Richmond residents have bought houses in Jackson Ward to renovate and restore in order to live in an historic area and revive the cultural character of the neighborhood. Each first Friday of the month, 1st Fridays Artwalk is held at night on Broad Street. Art Galleries open their doors to an outdoor party that includes live music, including Jazz and Salsa. Local restaurants, bars and a coffee shops serve customers who come to the First Fridays Art Walk.

See also


  • Neighborhoods of Richmond, Virginia
    Neighborhoods of Richmond, Virginia
    This article is about the various neighborhoods and districts in the Greater Richmond, Virginia area. Note that this article is an attempt to be inclusive of the broader definitions of the areas which are often considered part of Metropolitan Richmond, based on their urban or suburban character and...


External links

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