A new chapter – but not a new story: The spirit of protest has long imbued Richmond

In 1800, Gabriel, a literate blacksmith, planned an elaborate rebellion of enslaved people that was to include holding Virginia’s governor as a hostage and enlisting the support of Native Americans and the French.

“If it had gone off, it would have surely been more consequential than Nat Turner’s” rebellion, said Adam Ewing, an associate professor of African American studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. 

In 1904, John Mitchell Jr., editor of the Richmond Planet, urged a successful boycott of Richmond’s segregated streetcar system, five decades before a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.

The Virginia Passenger and Power Co. went bankrupt, but the General Assembly doubled down on its trolley segregation laws – an example of what Ewing called “the constant and significant efforts of white Americans to frustrate the constant and significant efforts of Black Americans to achieve racial equality.” 

In 1920, the party of Lincoln rejected Black Republicans in its “lily white” appeal to Caucasian voters. Mitchell responded by running for governor, heading a “lily Black” ticket that included banker and civic leader Maggie L. Walker, a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction.

Ewing also notes that during this decade, Richmond was home to a thriving community of adherents of Marcus Garvey, the Black nationalist and Pan-Africanist.