History in Our Everyday Lives

The Politics of Power and Voice

The years spanning the first and last monument were rife with political change and turmoil. During this time, Richmond experienced seismic political changes including another world war, the Civil Rights movement, urban disinvestment and white flight from the city, to name a few. The information provided in this section aims to narrate the changes in political power in the city of Richmond and Virginia. This shift ultimately would lead to Richmond’s, and the nation’s, first black governor and Monument Avenue’s first statue commemorating the life a black man. 

After Reconstruction, the politics of Jim Crow perpetuated racial hierarchies in Richmond. Like many southern states, Virginia held a constitutional convention in 1902 in order to replace the more equitable constitution adopted during Reconstruction. As Steven Hoffman writes in Race, Class, and Power in the Building of Richmond, 1870-1920, the convention aspired to “guarantee Democratic supremacy without the need to resort to election fraud and violence, the traditional means of ensuring Democratic victories across the state since Reconstruction.”³²

The Virginia State Legislature aided the Richmond Democrats through the passage of the Anderson-McCormick Elections Law of 1884 and the Walton Act passed in 1894. The former called for the election of three officials of each city who would then appoint the election officials. ³³ The Walton Act played a large hand in greatly reducing the black vote, even in the densely populated Jackson Ward, the historic center of Richmond’s black community. The basic provision of the act called for voting to take place in the voting booth, provided a 2 ½ minute time limit for marking the ballot, and made the ballot itself serve as a literacy test.  Walton explains that before the act’s implementation “the competing parties printed the ballots which were clearly marked using symbols…[and] voters would also receive the ballots before the election to deposit in the ballot box.” Under the control of the electoral board, generally Democrats, the new ballots under the Walton Act “contained no symbols to designate parties… and the ballots could not be seen until the voter was in the booth.”³⁴ Revealing the consequence of the act, the Richmond Planet reported on November 16, 1889 that in Jackson Ward “long lines of colored men were unable to vote and were driven away from the polls at sunset.”³⁵

Richmond’s voting power resided with the white oligarchy until African Americans made political strides in the 1940s.³⁶ In 1946, an association of over 80 church, civic, business, labor and educational groups came together to form the Richmond Civic Council (RCC). The RCC began a massive campaign drive to increase black voter turnout. Working alongside local white elite and Howard University Law School graduates, Oliver Hill and Thurgood Marshall, the RCC managed to greatly increase the size of the African-American voters, and therefore, African-American electorate. As a result of this effort, black lawyer Oliver Hill was to participate as an alderman in city council for two years. Throughout the 50s, Hill, Marshall, and the NAACP, continuously challenged the social structures disenfranchising the African American community.

After the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, the white flight of the 70s, and a 1977 Supreme Court ruling which found Richmond’s annexation had disenfranchised voters; Richmond’s black population finally gained its voice. The Washington Post commented on Richmond’s transition from its from white control and the fears that resulted concerning the fate of Monument Avenue. The Post reports that after Richmond elected its first majority-black City Council and first black mayor in 1977, “the outgoing white government deeded the Lee monument to the state to prevent it from being moved or torn down.”³⁷ Soon after, the newly elected Henry Marsh laid a wreath at the Jefferson Davis monument to assuage any race-related fears and to pronounce that he was “‘mayor of all the city.’”³⁸

By 1990, Richmond along with the state of Virginia would elect its first black governor, the politically centrist Douglas Wilder. His election would reopen Richmond’s conversations on public art on Monument Avenue and ultimately lead to the divisive decision to honor the great Arthur Ashe.