Richmond is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond Region. Richmond was incorporated in 1742 and has been an independent city since 1871. At the 2010 census, the city's population was 204,214; in 2020, the population had grown to 226,610, making Richmond the fourth-most populous city in Virginia. The Richmond Metropolitan Area has a population of 1,260,029, the third-most populous metro in the state.
Robert John Wynne was an American who served as United States Postmaster General from 1904 to 1905, and as Consul General at the American embassy in the United Kingdom from 1905 to 1910. He was also a distinguished and popular journalist for a number of newspapers and magazines in the late 1800s.
Claude Augustus Swanson was an American lawyer and Democratic politician from Virginia. He served as U.S. Representative (1893-1906), Governor of Virginia (1906-1910), and U.S. Senator from Virginia (1910-1933), before becoming U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 until his death. Swanson and fellow U.S. Senator Thomas Staples Martin led a Democratic political machine in Virginia for decades in the late 19th and early 20th century, which later became known as the Byrd Organization for Swanson's successor as U.S. Senator, Harry Flood Byrd.
James Brown was a Virginia-born American lawyer, planter and politician who served as a Secretary of State for the new state of Kentucky, and later as U.S. Senator from Louisiana, and Minister to France (1823-1829) before his retirement and death in Philadelphia.
The history of Richmond, Virginia, as a modern city, dates to the early 17th century, and is crucial to the development of the colony of Virginia, the American Revolutionary War, and the Civil War. After Reconstruction, Richmond's location at the falls of the James River helped it develop a diversified economy and become a land transportation hub.
Maggie Lena Walker was an American businesswoman and teacher. In 1903, Walker became both the first African American woman to charter a bank and the first African American woman to serve as a bank president. As a leader, Walker achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for African Americans. Disabled by paralysis and a wheelchair user later in life, Walker also became an example for people with disabilities.
Lott Cary was an African-American Baptist minister and lay physician who was a missionary leader in the founding of the colony of Liberia on the west coast of Africa in the 1820s. He founded the first Baptist church there in 1822, now known as Providence Baptist Church of Monrovia. He served as the colony's acting governor from August 1828 to his death in November of that year.
Jackson Ward is a historically African-American district in Richmond, Virginia with a long tradition of African-American businesses. It is located less than a mile from the Virginia State Capitol, sitting to the west of Court End and north of Broad Street. It was listed as a National Historic Landmark District in 1978. "Jackson Ward" was originally the name of the area's political district within the city, or ward, from 1871 to 1905, yet has remained in use long after losing its original meaning.
John Mitchell Jr. was an American businessman, newspaper editor, African American civil rights activist, and politician in Richmond, Virginia, particularly in Richmond's Jackson Ward, which became known as the "Black Wall Street of America." As editor of the Richmond Planet, he frequently published articles in favor of racial equality. In 1904, he organized a black boycott of the city's segregated trolley system.
Branch House in Richmond, Virginia, was designed in 1916 by the firm of John Russell Pope as a private residence of financier John Kerr Branch (1865–1930) and his wife Beulah Gould Branch (1860–1952).
Virginia Estelle Randolph was an American educator in Henrico County, Virginia. She was named the United States' first "Jeanes Supervising Industrial Teacher" by her Superintendent of Schools, Jackson Davis, and she led a program funded by the Jeanes Foundation to upgrade vocational training throughout the U.S. South as her career progressed. Her work is widely associated with vocational education. Two schools of the Henrico County Public Schools system were named in her honor and in 2009 Randolph was posthumously honored by the Library of Virginia as one of their "Virginia Women in History" for her career and contributions to education.
Alonzo Franklin Herndon was an African-American entrepreneur and businessman in Atlanta, Georgia. Born into slavery, he became one of the first African American millionaires in the United States, first achieving success by owning and operating three large barber shops in the city that served prominent white men. In 1905 he became the founder and president of what he built to be one of the United States' most well-known and successful African-American businesses, the Atlanta Family Life Insurance Company.
John A. Lankford, American architect. He was the first professionally licensed African American architect in Virginia in 1922 and in the District of Columbia in 1924. He has been regarded as the "dean of black architecture".
NC Mutual was an American life insurance company located in downtown Durham, North Carolina and one of the most influential African-American businesses in United States history. Founded in 1898 by local black social leaders, its business increased from less than a thousand dollars in income in 1899 to a quarter of a million dollars in 1910. The company specialized in "industrial insurance," which was basically burial insurance. The company hired salesmen whose main job was to collect small payments to cover the insured person for the next week. If the person died while insured, the company immediately paid benefits of about 100 dollars. This covered the cost of a suitable funeral, which was a high prestige item in the black community. It began operations in the new tobacco manufacturing city of Durham, North Carolina, and moved north into Virginia and Maryland, then to major northern black urban centers, and then to the rest of the urban South.
Grand United Order of True Reformers was an American fraternal organization for African-Americans led by people of European-descent, founded in 1873 in Alabama and Kentucky. By c. 1875, the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers, or the True Reformers, was re-organized for and led by African-Americans and founded in Richmond, Virginia by William Washington Browne. This organization existed as a business and a mutual-aid society during the era of Jim Crow segregation laws, and it supported the growing African-American middle class through economic opportunities and education, before its closure in 1934.
Founded in 1902 by John Mitchell, Jr., Mechanics Savings Bank was a bank in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Mitchell, who was an African American, also owned and edited the Richmond Planet. In 1905 the bank bought a three-story brick building at No. 310 East Broad Street. The bank's Clay Street and Third building was designed by architect Carl Ruehrmund and constructed in 1910. The bank was the chief depository of the Knights of Pythias. At the time of its failure in 1922, the bank had deposits totaling approximately $500,000. In 1930, the Clay Street Building was purchased by the Southern Aid and Insurance Company.
Z. D. Lewis (1859–1926) was an influential Baptist church leader and the first president of the Southern Aid and Insurance Company based in Richmond, Virginia. It was the oldest African American owned insurance company in the U.S. when it was acquired by another agency in 1977. The company wrote insurance for industrial life, accident and sick benefits insurance and was licensed in New Jersey, Virginia and District of Columbia, and had offices in Alexandria, Bristol, Charlottesville, Danville, Farmville, Fredericksburg, Lynchburg, Newport News, Norfolk, Petersburg, Portsmouth, Richmond, Roanoke, Saluda, Suffolk, Winchester, Virginia; and Washington, D.C. Lewis was politically influential and became involved in leadership disputes within the African American Baptist community of Richmond.
Everett J. Waring was the first Black person admitted to the Maryland State Bar Association in 1885 and the Supreme Court Bench of Baltimore on October 10, 1885. He practiced before the Supreme Court of the United States and the Maryland State Appellate Court. He represented individuals involved in the Navassa Island riot of 1889, which occurred after African American men were lured to the island to gather guano to be used as fertilizer. The men were subject to inhumane treatment, low pay, and high cost of goods. He lost the Jones v. United States jurisdiction case and the men were found guilty.
Daniel Webster Davis was an American educator, minister, and poet. He taught and ministered in Richmond, Virginia, and became a popular author and speaker, going on several speaking tours around the United States and Canada. He also published two volumes of poetry that have received mixed critical assessment; some scholars have criticized him for perpetrating stereotypes of African Americans while others have argued that he was as radical as he could have been in his era.
Alfred Douglas Price, Sr. (1860–1921) also known as A. D. Price, was an African American businessman and community leader in the late 19th-century and early 20th-century in Richmond, Virginia. He owned a blacksmith shop, funeral home, and a livery. Price was one of the largest African American real estate owners in his city and the A.D. Price Funeral Home is now a national historic site.
