The Shockoe ExaminerBlogging the History of Richmond, Virginia: Black History Museum Reopens in Historic Armory Today.

Friday, May 6, 2016

Black History Museum Reopens in Historic Armory Today.

After years of preparations, the Black History Museum and Cultural Center is re-opening in the Leigh Street Armory. The building has more than a century of history in Richmond, including a decades-long effort to save it.

Virginia Currents producer Catherine Komp reports on the armory which includes an interview with Selden Richardson, Shockoe Examiner editor and a long time activist in helping to save this unique American building. Read the article HERE.

Find out more about the Black History Museum and Cultural Center. Grand opening events include poetry and music 7:00-9:00 pm, Friday May 6th and free admission 10:00 am-5:00 pm, Saturday May 7th. Regular hours begin Tuesday May 10th.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Contributors:

Ray Bonis:

Ray worked at VCU Libraries' James Branch Cabell Library from 1989 until 2021. He is the co-author of Virginia Commonwealth University (2006) and Greetings from Richmond (2009) - an architectural history of the city.

Selden Richardson:

Architectural historian and author of Built By Blacks: African American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia (2006), The Tri-State Gang in Richmond: Murder and Robbery in the Great Depression. (2012), and Richmond Murder & Mayhem (2023)

On History:

"The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow."
-- G. M. Trevelyan (1876-1962) from his "Autobiography of an Historian," An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).

Key Dates in Richmond History
(more to follow)

1737 – William Mayo laid out the original street plan for the town of Richmond on land provided by William Byrd II.

1742 – Chartered as a town

1780 – Virginia’s state capital moved from Williamsburg to Richmond.

1782 – Incorporated as a city.

1788 - Virginia State Capitol building completed.

1860-1865 – Serves as capital of the Confederate States of America.

1910 - Manchester, the city located just south of the James, is consolidated with Richmond.

1949 - Oliver Hill (1907-2007) elected to City Council, first African American since Reconstruction.

1968 - Virginia Commonwealth University created by the merger of the Medical College of Virginia and Richmond Professional Institute.

1977 - Henry Marsh elected as first African American mayor of Richmond.

2009 – Shockoe Examiner founded.