Richmond Residents Ask ‘Whose City is It?’

Walking along Broad Street from N. Belvidere Street to 2nd, the stretch includes myriad art galleries, cafes, consignment shops and restaurants. The recent additions are part of why Richmond is receiving national attention as an ideal city for millennials to put down roots.

There are also signs of urban plight: dilapidated residences, abandoned shops and a lack of access to basic necessities aside from a single Rite Aid and one convenience store.

The contrast between these two images captures what some developers call transformation or revitalization but is more commonly known as gentrification.

Gentrification was first coined by British-German sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 after she observed a new phenomenon of upper-income Londoners moving into and changing poorer neighborhoods. What was once an unknown strategy is now common in cities globally.

“Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district, it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced, and the whole social character of the district is changed,” Glass wrote.

It’s a word that is thrown around liberal circles to comment on our simultaneous frustration with the process but also acknowledges our complicity. After all, I attended VCU, I lived in the newly re-branded Arts District, an area that was historically majority black Jackson Ward, in an open concept studio and usually went to a “local” overpriced cafe.

You know, the ones in all the gentrified neighborhoods in America which, for some unknown reason, always stick to green as their main color palette of choice? The ones with the local hipsters making your cafes but not in a uniform, of course not. If you look at the back of the cafe, probably near the entrance or the restrooms, you’ll find a haphazard compilation of local shows and artsy events.

Granted, I did make extra efforts to go to the older establishments. The ones which still have some soul in them. The ones where if you talk to the owners enough you get to learn about the complex history that has created Richmond’s gritty charm — and why that charm can’t just be recreated with new shops.

Increasingly however though it’s new attractions, not the older ones, throughout Richmond that is said to benefit the city and its residents. But critics say they haven’t seen signs that the changes are helping the struggling public school system or the delivery of social services.

According to a report released last year by current and former professors at Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond as well as the director of Housing Opportunities Made Equal, segregation in Richmond is nearly the same as before the civil rights achievements of the 1960s.

There has been a 2.3 increase of white residents moving back to the city and a 1.2 percent decrease in white poverty. The number of black residents has decreased by 2.5 percent, their poverty continues to increase and they account for 43 percent of all new residents in Chesterfield and Henrico counties.

This leaves many of the capital city’s longtime black residents with this question: Who benefits the most from the new Richmond?

As someone who is leaving Richmond with a strong desire to come back one day, I ask what happens when a city tries to sanitize the same charm, the same grittiness that made it attractive in the first place? Why does decrease of violence seem to correlate with displacing the people who grinded through a city’s most tumultuous parts and who may love that city more than anyone else can? Not cause of the bars, or the cafes or the consignment shops but because of the community?

“You have to look at the population, the demographics of longtime residents versus why are we gentrifying, who are we gentrifying for,” said Ron Jones, owner of The HeadHunters Barber Shop on W. Broad St. “We’re not gentrifying for long-time residents in the African-American community. we are gentrifying for white America, let’s just be plain and simple about that.”

A few blocks down from HeadHunters is Waller & Company Jewelers on E. Broad. The 118-year-old business was founded by Marcellus Carrington Waller in 1900. It has maintained generations of customers in its several locations over the years. Today it’s owned by Marcellus’s grandson, Richard Waller Jr., who runs the store alongside his two sons and two of his sisters.

“When I first came onto Broad Street in the 1970s it was vibrant,” said Richard Jr. Waller, 80. “A lot of people came. They had big department stores like Thalhimers, Miller & Rhoads and Woolworth’s and then gradually, gradually, gradually, they closed up and business somewhat slowed down, but we’ve always been busy.”

Across the street from the jewelry store is Barky’s Spiritual Stores. Barksdale “Barky” Haggins, 86, opened the store in 1956 immediately after serving in the military.

“When we first went into business we were carrying records, period,” he said. “The records consisted of rhythm-and-blues and gospel and at that time, James Brown was beginning to get started. The Teenagers were popular and B.B. King had released some new songs.”

Haggins and Waller have seen Richmond, especially the Jackson Ward neighborhood north of Broad Street, go through a variety of transformations over the span of several decades. They remember when Jackson Ward was called the “Black Wall Street of the South” and how the creation of Interstate 95 in the mid-1950s, as well as integration in the post-Civil Rights era, disrupted the area.

“I remember when we first started the business Richmond was being called a chocolate city, like D.C., because during that era, Richmond had become predominantly black,” Haggins said. “A lot of the white people had moved out, they were selling their properties in the North Side for $12,000 because they didn’t want to live around us.”

The phenomenon Haggins described is called white flight. This was period in the 1950s and 1960s during and after the civil rights era when many white Americans moved to less ethnically and racially diverse suburbs to avoid integration.

By the 1980s, concerns over drug-related crimes and violence placed a target over black neighborhoods like those in Richmond. The city’s murder rate soared, but some of the measures used to fight the war on drugs would later bring criticism.

Between 1988 to 1998, the city reported more than 100 homicides annually and the number remained between 70 to 94 annual homicides until 2006.

During the peak of gun violence in 1994, Richmond ranked second in the nation with an average of 161 homicides in that year alone or 80 per 100,000 people per capita. In August of that year, media outlets widely reported that 25 people were killed — a murder nearly every day of the month.

During my graduation ceremony, this past May my uncle walked around the city in shock.

“I thought you lived in the hood but there are a bunch of white people walking around, I guess it’s a sign I should buy property here,” he said to me as I sweltered through a polyester graduation cap and gown and a layer of a traditional woolen dress.

It was problematic, to say the least, but he captured a genuine disconnect between the Richmond that was in the news when I was born in the mid-1990s and the Richmond advertised today.

In 1997 the U.S. Attorney’s Office launched Project Exile. The crime reduction strategy took prosecution of illegal guns to the federal court level where they carried a five-year minimum sentence if charged.

Jerry Oliver, a long-time police chief who achieved success in cities like Phoenix and Pasadena, was brought on as Richmond’s police chief in 1995 and oversaw the implementation of Project Exile. He has received as much criticism as he has praise for the massive reduction in gun violence Richmond experience until he left for another position in Detroit in 2002.

Oliver implemented lesser-known endeavors like Project Bloom where those released from “exile” would return to their communities in Richmond and push revitalization efforts as described in a 1999 Style Weekly article.

“People only like to remember the bad but when the violence was happening, when people were dying left and right and even more people were being assaulted, mugged, they wanted change,” Oliver said to me during a phone call back in April. “I changed the police culture from an idea that arresting people is a good thing to focusing on changing the community. The cultural change I brought to Richmond police stations may or may not have continued once I left.”

The sense of safety for many new residents, no matter how it came to be, is still enough to encourage the continued signs of gentrification on Broad Street. Richmond is now praised by Forbes, U.S. News and MoveHub, among others as one of the country’s up and coming cities.

However, for Jones, whose brother was arrested at the age of 19 under Exile, the benefits of Richmond’s “change” as a result of its decreasing murder rate has not extended to its long-time black residents.

“I don’t think there’s been a change in Richmond,” Jones said. “I can’t think of a time period in certain parts of the city when there wasn’t a beef that has constituted a high concentration of violence, it just gets reported in a roller coaster ride.”

A change currently occurring in the city is the opening of the GRTC Pulse which began its service on June 24. The rapid transit system runs 7.6 miles on Broad st. and Main st. between Rocketts Landing located in Richmond to Willow Lawn located in Henrico County.

“In my opinion, as far as the buses (GRTC) are concerned, they are going the wrong direction,” Waller said. “They should be going towards Short Pump, that’s where the jobs are and there is maybe one city bus headed there right now.”

According to Carrie Rose Pace, director of communications for GRTC transit system, 60 percent of riders use public transportation as a way to go to and come back from work and two-thirds of all jobs within in the city are within half a mile walking distance from the pulse stops.

The creation of the Pulse is coordinated with the expansion of existing bus routes, including the expansion of route 19 to Short Pump, in an attempt to make access to jobs and services easier according to Pace.

“In general what we know about other cities that have done a rapid transit system that you do see increased ridership, increased usage because of it more beneficial for riders and you see economic development across the route itself,” Pace said.

Haggins accounted for the change in business flow to the natural progression of time.

“The people who used to come here as teenagers are now in their 50s, 60s and many of them have moved on,” Haggins said. “I bought this building in 1980 and get approached all the time to sell it but I have no plans to do so.”

Waller said that there is not much that could make him want to sell the company.

“I recognize what goes on and I have to work harder. I have to work cheaper to maintain but I’m determined to succeed, I have that in me,” Waller said. “We are not selling unless I’m offered a couple million dollars and an island in the Caribbean, if not we’ll be here.”