Westwood Community Update

Richmond News-Leader article from February 19, 1947.

This is an update to our original post on the Westwood Community - please click HERE to that original posting from two years ago. 

The community of Westwood, located at Willow Lawn Drive and Patterson Avenue, has received approval from the Department of Historic Resources of an historical marker for Westwood Baptist Church:

Westwood Baptist Church This church traces its origins to 1872, when a group of formerly enslaved African Americans began meeting for Bible study at the home of Robert Pemberton. In 1876, the congregation’s trustees purchased a half-acre lot here for $25 for the Westwood Colored Baptist Church. The Rev. George Daggett, first pastor, served for two decades. Early baptisms took place in nearby Jordan’s Branch. A vibrant African American community, originally in Henrico County and later annexed by the City of Richmond, developed around the church. Many 20th-century pastors graduated from the Virginia Union University seminary. Their oratorical skills and political leadership fostered a thriving church.

For some reason, the church and its congregants have neglected one of the most historically important periods in its history. Seventy years ago, the church was the rallying point around which Westwood’s residents resisted a blatant attack whose goal was the complete obliteration of the entire community.

It is unfortunate that the Westwood community would be content to not recall this critical period in their history, and the fact Westwood Baptist Church was the principal fortress from which the residents fought the City of Richmond and surrounding white neighborhoods.  Services such as sewer and water were deliberately withheld, and the whole neighborhood was reduced to getting water in buckets from a single outlet.  White politicians proposed the entire area be demolished and turned into a City park.  Reverend Waller, leader of the church, spearheaded the resistance to this kind of naked racism that made Westwood a battleground in the battle for civil rights.  This is an important piece of Richmond history, and unless a separate marker will commemorate this struggle, the real history of the little neighborhood and its church will disappear.

The text of the proposed historical marker is a bland retelling of the history of Westwood Baptist Church, and not in keeping with today’s reexamination of Richmond’s history in general and African-American history in particular. 

In order that that heroic defense of Westwood not be ignored and the struggles the residents went through not be forgotten, we ask you to visit our original post on the subject from the pages of the Shockoe Examiner from two years ago.

Visit that original post HERE.

- Selden