Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is Virginia's third capital city, chosen for its protected inland location. It was also chosen as the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War, at which time it was almost destroyed. Many of its nineteenth-century buildings still stand, however, and are admired for their classic beauty. Conveniently located near mountains, water, and the national capital, Richmond continues to attract many visitors.

Landscape

Richmond is located about a hundred miles south of Washington, DC, in a mainly wooded area. The state capital is one of numerous cities that grew up around the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the geographical boundary that runs along the East Coast and separates the Atlantic coastal plain from the Piedmont plateau region. Located on the James River, Richmond lies in the Piedmont plateau, which is west of the state's Tidewater coastal region. The city is situated approximately 177 feet above sea level.

Summers in Richmond are among Virginia's warmest, with high humidity. Winters are mild, with occasional ice storms, and has historically averaged fourteen inches of snowfall. The average low temperature in January is 30 degrees Fahrenheit; July's average high is 89 degrees Fahrenheit, based on Weather Spark data from 2020 to 2024.

Richmond has a higher risk than the US average for both hurricanes and tornadoes. It receives more average annual precipitation than the national average as well, at 44 inches. The city has historically had an average of 113 rainy days per year, with the summer months receiving the greatest amount of rain.

Climate change has impacted Richmond. Higher temperatures in the city have caused heat waves and extreme rain. The city has seem more frequent droughts and forest fires.

People

According to estimates from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey, Richmond's population in 2022 was 229,395. Black or African Americans were the majority race in the city, making up 44 percent of the population in 2022, while White people made up 41.8 percent. Those of Hispanic or Latino descent accounted for 7.6 percent, and Asians made up 2.3 percent of the total.

The median household income of Richmond was $59,606, which is far below the statewide median of $87,249. During the same period, an estimated 19.5 percent of the population lived below the poverty line, compared to 10.6 percent statewide.

Economy

The unemployment rate among working-age adults in the Richmond area, at 2.9 percent in 2023, was slightly greater than that of the state at 2.7 percent. Tobacco, long a staple crop for the region, remains important to the economy. Noteworthy manufacturing subsectors include aerospace, chemicals, fabricated metals, machinery, packaging, pharmaceuticals plastics, and processed foods. Logistics, distribution, finance and insurance, and information technology have also become key industries in the greater Richmond area. In 2023. an estimated 4,000 persons were employed by the local, state, or federal government in public administration.

Richmond's leading employment sectors in 2023 were professional and business services; health care and social assistance; and trade, transportation, and utilities.

Institutions of higher education include University of Richmond, Union Theological Seminary, Virginia Union University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College.

Landmarks

When Richmond became the state capital in 1780, Thomas Jefferson designed the first capitol building, modeling it on a Roman temple located in the south of France. It remains one of the nation's thirteen statehouses without an exterior dome. The Old House Chamber, the capitol's largest room, now functions as a museum. In that room, Robert E. Lee accepted the command of the Confederate armed services of Virginia. The capitol also houses the only extant statue of George Washington for which he actually posed, hewn from white marble. The capitol was renovated and expanded between 1902 and 1906.

Until 1814, the town's only church was Saint John's Episcopal Church (now Historic St. John's Church), built in 1741. In addition to being a house of worship, it is also the location of Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech.

The American Civil War Museum's White House and Museum of the Confederacy contains the largest collection of Confederate memorabilia and artifacts in the world. Built in 1812, it was the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his family between 1861 and 1865. Many of the pieces that belonged to the Davis family now furnish the house. Other historic homes open to the public include those of prominent attorney John Wickham, Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee, and Supreme Court justice John Marshall. The city also houses the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, as Poe lived in Richmond during the first half of the nineteenth century, and the Beth Ahabah Museum and Archives, showcasing local and statewide Jewish history.

For a different look at the Civil War, the Chimborazo Medical Museum, run by the National Park Service, offers displays of early medical equipment. Chimborazo was one of five military hospitals that operated in the state during the Civil War. The hospital had 250 buildings and tended about seventy-six thousand wounded. At the time, it was one of the world's largest military hospitals.

Established in 1981, the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia celebrates African American achievements throughout Virginian history and conserves related artifacts and ephemera. It was first housed in the former Rosa D. Bowser branch of the Richmond Public Library, the branch open to African American residents; in 2016, it moved into the Leigh Street Armory building.

History

The region was first inhabited by American Indian tribes, including the Powhatan, who oversaw a large confederacy of tribes. Captains John Smith and Christopher Newport sailed up the James River to the site of present-day Richmond on May 23, 1607, just ten days after their landing at Jamestown. Thomas Stegg built a trading post on the site in 1637. Fort Charles was constructed there in 1644, leading to a trading post dealing in hides, fur, and tobacco. In 1733, William Byrd, who inherited the land from his father, named the settlement for Richmond upon Thames in England. Richmond became a town in 1742, with a small population of 250 people. In 1774, the town hosted the Virginia Convention, creating a standing body of anti-British feeling.

Richmond is the third capital of Virginia, following Jamestown (1616–99) and Williamsburg (1699–1780). The capital was moved inland during the Revolutionary War because Williamsburg was too vulnerable to capture by the British. Even so, the British attacked the city twice. Benedict Arnold, who commanded the raid that pillaged Richmond in 1781, left a donation for the city's poor; it was later returned to him.

The city prospered and grew from the 1790s through the 1850s. The James River and Kanawha Canal linked Richmond to Lynchburg in 1840, and within two decades, several railroads offered service to the city. Both allowed faster shipping of wheat and tobacco. Factories in Richmond processed, flavored, and packed smokeless tobacco, creating a major industry. The city also became the second-largest producer and shipper of flour, surpassed only by Baltimore.

Following the economic depressions of the 1820s and 1830s, flour and tobacco exports grew. Richmond also served as the nation's major coffee port, exchanging flour for coffee beans from South America. Both cotton mills and ironworks grew up along the James River. Local foundries produced the cast-iron gates, fences, and trim that grace many of the city's nineteenth-century homes.

Richmond was at first opposed to secession from the Union prior to the Civil War. After the firing on Fort Sumter, however, the state convention reversed an earlier decision not to secede. Because of Richmond's role as a major producer of both iron and food, Confederate president Jefferson Davis accepted the city's offer to move the capital there from Montgomery, Alabama. Ammunition, guns, rails, and armor for the ironclad ship Virginia came from the city's Tredegar Ironworks.

During the winter of 1864–65, Richmond's citizens suffered shortages of clothing, fuel, and food. General Lee sent a message to Jefferson Davis that the city needed to be abandoned. Before leaving, people torched the tobacco warehouses so that the Union would not benefit from the products. Confederate officers also destroyed their own ships on the James River. Union troops regained control of the city in April 1865.

Just forty hours after Davis had left the city, President Abraham Lincoln, escorted by black cavalrymen, walked the streets of the city. Much of Richmond had burned during the conflict. Despite the destruction left by the war and the national financial panics in 1873 and 1893, however, the city recovered over the next three decades, in part because of the lucrative tobacco industry.

Richmond played an integral role in the civil rights movement. When the US Supreme Court handed down its historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, Virginia was one of the states that supported the so-called Southern Manifesto of 1956, which called for "massive resistance" to integrated schools. The state closed several public schools, including those in Richmond, to prevent integration, while at the same time battling in court to retain segregated classrooms.

On January 1, 1959, around 1,800 citizens met at the Mosque theater in Richmond for the Pilgrimage of Prayer for Public Schools, supported by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). About half that number then marched to the state capitol, where they passed a resolution supporting a biracial commission to end the crisis. Exactly one year later, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the keynote address at the second annual Pilgrimage of Prayer, which again culminated in a march to the capitol.

In the face of these protests, the state and its capital began a campaign of passive resistance to integration, employing techniques such as white flight to the suburbs and private schools. The percentage of white students in Richmond dropped from 45 percent in 1960 to 21 percent in 1975. In 1971, a federal judge ordered a citywide busing program in the capital in Bradley v. Richmond School Board. The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision by a vote of five to four the following year.

Integration of all facilities was slow. On February 20, 1960, a group of African American students marched from the campus of Virginia Union University to a Woolworth's on Broad Street. They filled the thirty-four seats at the lunch counter and waited for service. The store closed rather than serve them. A second protest, two days later, brought police with dogs and resulted in multiple arrests. Other African Americans that year picketed some of the city's major department stores, encouraging a boycott.

All of the efforts for equality across the nation led to President Lyndon Johnson's support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which eliminated the poll tax and literacy tests. Dramatic changes ensued as the number of black voters tripled nationally within three years. By 1977, most of Richmond's city council members were black.

In the mid-to-late 2010s, Richmond, a majority-black city and the former Confederate capital, became embroiled in controversy over its Confederate monuments after racist violence in Charleston and Charlottesville. In 2017, a Monument Avenue Commission was charged with reviewing the options of installing explanatory plaques, removal, or relocation. In mid-2018, the commission recommended removing the Davis statue, adding context to four others, and installing memorials to the enslaved population and black Civil War veterans; complicating matters, a state law forbade the removal of war memorials. An international design contest was held, and a exhibit of the artistic submissions displayed in 2019 at the Valentine museum to spark dialogue. In February 2019, a Richmond History and Culture Commission was appointed to review all historical sites and advise on the Monument Avenue statues.

Bibliography

Baker, Meredith Henne. The Richmond Theater Fire: Early America's First Great Disaster. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2012. Print.

Burns, Brian. Curiosities of the Confederate Capital: Untold Richmond Stories of the Spectacular, Tragic, and Bizarre. Charleston: History, 2013. Print.

"City of Richmond." Greater Richmond Partnership, www.grpva.com/about-grp/city-of-richmond. Accessed 2 May. 2019.

"The Fall of Richmond, Virginia." Civil War Trust. Civil War Trust, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2013.

Griggs, Walter S., Jr. Hidden History of Richmond. Charleston: History, 2012. Print.

"History of BHM." Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virgina, 2016, blackhistorymuseum.org/history-of-bhm. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.

Hoffman, Steven J. Race, Class and Power in the Building of Richmond, 1870–1920. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004. Print.

Lombardo, Clare. "Richmond, Va., Panel Recommends Removing Jefferson Davis Statue." NPR, 3 July 2018, www.npr.org/2018/07/03/625597993/richmond-va-panel-recommends-removing-jefferson-davis-statue. Accessed 2 May. 2019.

"Richmond, Virginia." Quick Facts, US Census Bureau, 1 July 23, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/richmondcityvirginia/PST045222. Accessed 22 Feb. 2024.

Salmon, Emily J., and John S. Salmon. Historic Photos of Richmond in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Nashville: Turner, 2010. Print.

State of the Climate: National Climate Report for Annual 2016. National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Dept. of Commerce, Jan. 2017, www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201613. Accessed 22 Feb. 2024.