Richmond

RICHMOND

RICHMOND occupies the hilly terrain at the falls of the James River in Virginia. Native Americans inhabited that area, but the English created a series of temporary settlements there beginning in 1609 and erected a fort in the 1640s. Later, planter William Byrd I maintained a trading

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post in the same vicinity. His son, William Byrd II, founded and named Richmond, incorporated in 1742. The meeting place for several notable Revolutionary War–era conventions, the town served as a storehouse for American armies, became the state capital in 1779, and suffered damage from two British raids in 1781.

After the Revolution, Richmond featured distinctive buildings, especially the state capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson. The city was the scene of the Gabriel Prosser slave conspiracy of 1800, the Aaron Burr treason trial of 1807, and a deadly theater fire in 1811. During the antebellum period, Richmond became a manufacturing center known for its flour, iron, and tobacco products. Steamboat traffic, a westward canal, and railroads made the town a transportation and commercial hub. German and Irish immigrants augmented a workforce that included free blacks and African American slaves.

As the capital of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, Richmond became the target of repeated Union military campaigns. Facing a population, swollen by military personnel, government officials, refugees, and Union prisoners, authorities struggled to provide such essential goods as food and vital services, including medical care for the many wounded soldiers. As retreating Confederates evacuated the city on 3 April 1865, fires that had been set to destroy warehouses spread and incinerated much of the downtown. Postwar commemorations gradually transformed Richmond into a shrine to the Confederacy. In addition to Hollywood and Oakwood cemeteries, the city featured countless statues, stately Monument Avenue, and numerous museums and historic sites.

Following Reconstruction, conservative politicians were dominant over dissenting groups, including blacks, and the city floundered economically. Despite their political suppression, African Americans developed successful secret societies, churches, and businesses. The early twentieth century brought renewed prosperity and growth fueled by diversified industries, resurgent commerce, and robust banking. Nationally acclaimed authors, significant educational institutions, and dynamic religious organizations made Richmond a cultural center. Reformers led local and statewide campaigns to improve education, health, and public welfare. Organized labor remained a political force until the 1920s, when politicians resumed a conservative course they upheld through the rest of the century. In the 1950s and 1960s, officials resisted and delayed desegregation of schools and other public facilities and whites relocated to nearby suburbs. In 1977 the black majority on the city council elected Richmond's first African American mayor. Despite post–World War II annexations, the population within the city limits shrank to 197,790 in 2000, down from 202,278 in 1990.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chesson, Michael B. Richmond after the War, 1865–1890. Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1981.

Kimball, Gregg D. American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.

Shepherd Samuel C., Jr. Avenues of Faith: Shaping the Urban Religious Culture of Richmond, Virginia, 1900–1929. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001.

Tyler-McGraw, Marie. At the Falls: Richmond, Virginia, and Its People. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Samuel C. Shepherd Jr.

See also Civil War ; Slave Insurrections ; South, the: New South ; Virginia .