Talk:Jackson Ward

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Welcome to the Talk page for the Wikipedia article on Richmond's Jackson Ward.

Blurb for DYK
Did You Know


 * ...that Jackson Ward is an historically African-American neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia where free blacks joined freed slaves and their descendents and created a thriving business community known as the "Black Wall Street of America?"

Wrong Ebenezer
Removed link for Ebenezer Baptist Church -- link was to EBC in Atlanta, which is obviously a different Ebenezer from the one in Richmond VA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.80.0.131 (talk) 14:44, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

More work needed
I made some changes late Wednesday (and did some cleanup today) about Jackson Ward's development during the 19th and 20th centuries. Frankly, I had planned to work on an article on my sandbox, expanding it concerning post Civil War race relations (in one immediate post-Reconstruction election, the courier carrying all Jackson Ward votes was ambushed, so none of those mostly Republican votes was counted and white Democrats took control of the City), but performed history triage on this instead. Frankly, the history section of the Richmond article probably needs triage more, but I do what I can with limited resources (and northern Virginia libraries were closed yesterday and today). I corrected links and added new ones, as well as a development discussion using Ben Campbell's book.

Admittedly, the book has issues (including no index), but conventional histories of Richmond tend to minimize (if not ignore) racial politics and disparities. I don't claim to be an expert in the matter, nor on gentrification. Campbell's book also doesn't compare Richmond's raze-and-build development with that of Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Philadelphia of similar times, with which I'm more familiar, and each of which may be more typical of different urban development problems. Chicago likewise destroyed near-downtown neighborhoods in the 1960s to construct a central business district with relatively little night-activity for a while. Unlike Richmond, Philadelphia residents successfully fought I-95 being brought through their downtown, which IMHO never decayed to the extent of Richmond's. Philly did destroy many small houses to create Independence National Historic Park (and the surrounding historic districts) in the 1970s, but that led to tourist revenue and gentification/revitalization even in the 1980s, much sooner than Richmond, IMHO since I remember multiple vacant, out-of-business storefronts along Broad Street and around the Convention Center in the early 1990s. Philly didn't concentrate its public housing like Richmond, and by the 1990s had razed most of the problematic high-crime, high-rise projects that like Richmond's were built in the 1960s (at least near its city center--its problem area remains once-industrial North Philly). Boston similarly preserved much of its historic center, and while its business district had issues, night life and weekend shoppers never disappeared. Dallas was one of many cities that created concrete canyons in that 1960s to 1980s era, which remained virtually pedestrian-free on weekend nights as well as weekends, until urban planners started appreciating and addressing the problem in the late 1990s. Campbell's book also doesn't address Richmond's flood issues, and their effects on development; I know nothing in Philly nor Boston comparable to the mid-1990s flood in Shockoe Bottom. Poor people often are forced to settle in problem areas, like the flood-prone areas near the James River.

I'm also writing here hoping I didn't create too many errors in describing this era in Richmond, since right now I'm far away and haven't access to resources to determine exactly where Penitentiary Bottom and other mentioned areas are. Libby Prison and the Lumpkin Slave jail were in Shockoe Bottom, the 19th century commercial district between Shockoe Hill and Church Hill (and which flooded badly in 2004 despite flood-control improvements in the 1990s), but those articles don't mention Jackson Ward's boundaries. I've seen Jackson Ward signs en route to Shockoe Bottom, so if it's outside Jackson Ward, I apologize. Judging from the street addresses in the Virginia State Penitentiary article, I believe that's in Jackson Ward (although not mentioned/linked). Without a map in front of me as well as the description in both historic district NRIS docs, I'm unable to figure out whether the ward extends from Shockoe Bottom on one side to the lowlands around the Shockoe cemetery. Per the map produced in a google search, Fulton Hill is on the other side of Church Hill from Shockoe Hill, so I'm pretty sure that Fulton Bottom is outside Jackson Ward, but I mentioned it in the article as the final example of bulldozer-based redevelopment in Campbell's book. I've gotten lost trying to enter the mentioned expressway that split Jackson Ward, and ended up passing the modern prison/judicial complex near Shockoe cemetery (and I've also gotten misrouted there when I needed to be at the Manchester courthouse complex across the river). I've also gotten lost and driven around the Mosby public housing, stopping to take a photo or two of a historic marker surrounded by modern near-blight (unlike the gentrification in Jackson Ward nearer the Convention Center and Coloseum). En route to the Convention Center's tourist office for a map and directions, I've marveled at the modernity surrounding the Oliver Hill firm's historic marker, which is touched on in this article's last section, but I haven't driven down to Richmond to take one of the Jackson Ward tours now offered by the Valentine Museum and/or the Virginia Historical Society. Campbell's book is the only one I know that addresses modern redevelopment issues with a racial as well as historic focus. Also, if I made an incorrect link for F.M. Whittle (whom I know as a white Episcopal bishop, as I know Ben Campbell is a retired white Episcopal priest), I apologize, but Jackson Ward may well have been the focus of his racial harmonization activities, in part because of Maggie Walker. I haven't come across any good bio of him (nor history of this Ward. That might reflect my time and resource constraints, but I'm also repeatedly surprized by the limited number of historical studies of the Jim Crow era compared to the Civil War and the Lost Cause. If any does exist, here's one place for it to be incorporated and cited. I'm not comfortable accusing white city planners of targeting blacks, but redevelopment is always about money (and often fails or has unforeseen consequences). Bulldozing places housing poor people can be cheaper than razing and redeveloping newer buildings (as happened in Chicago's downtown and lakefront neighborhoods for decades).Jweaver28 (talk) 17:34, 24 November 2017 (UTC)