Historic Fulton Oral History Project

 

“Fulton" (1952), from the Adolph B. Rice Studio Collection at Library of VA

Image taken from: Church Hill People’s News

Available through VCU Libraries’ Digital Collections, the Historic Fulton Oral History Project is a collection of interview audio recordings and their transcripts with the purpose of documenting and preserving the memory of the Historic Fulton neighborhood, which was located in Richmond’s East End. This project was developed in 2011 by the Virginia Local Initiatives Support Corporation, The Valentine, the Neighborhood Resource Center of Greater Fulton, and the Greater Fulton Legacy Work team.

“The Historic Fulton Oral History collection contains 17 interviews with 32 named interviewee participants. The interviewees are teachers, activists, clergy, and community leaders who grew up in the predominantly African-American Historic Fulton community in the 1930s through 1950s.” [Text taken from the VCU Libraries webpage].

An incredibly insightful and emotional collection, the interviewees tell stories about what it was like growing up and living in Fulton. Many of the participants fondly reminisce about their time in the community and emphasize the sentiment of family between residents. Former Fulton teacher and community member, Estelle Braxton Davis, states in her interview, “[...] we served, we worked as a community, neighbors were neighbors, and everybody was one family”. Though most families living in the community were considered low-income and many homes were without modern amenities, several of the interview participants expressed that they did not feel as if they grew up lacking. The interviewees describe Fulton as having been a self-sufficient and bustling urban center, with many successful Black-owned businesses and an array of educated and accomplished residents.

Furthermore, the interviewees were witnesses to the Fulton Urban Renewal Plan of the 1970s, which led to the destruction of the community’s structures and forced relocation of Fulton residents. Moreover, reconstruction did not start on the land until over a decade after the locality’s demolition and continued at a slow pace. Widely considered a failure due to the lack of timely development, this urban renewal project and the destruction of a historic community is a shameful stain on Richmond’s history. Many of the interviewees state that Fulton will never be what it once was, but they express their hopes for the future of the neighborhood. This oral history project is incredibly important to preserve Historic Fulton’s memory, as well as to combat the negative narratives about the former community. In 2020, ground was broken for a memorial park for Historic Fulton- which is located at 5001 Williamsburg Ave.

Here are some additional web pages with more information on Historic Fulton, as well as the damaging effects of urban renewal projects on Black Virginian communities: 

Style Weekly 2007 Cover Story on Historic Fulton “The Greatest Place on Earth”

Church Hill People’s News “Photographs of Old Fulton”

A People’s Guide “Historic Fulton Memorial Park”

Encyclopedia Virginia “Urban Renewal in Virginia”

 

-- Gabrielle Dietrich, VCU undergraduate majoring in International Studies and French with a minor in History. She graduates in the Spring of 2024.