Richmond and Central Virginia
The People’s Guide to Richmond, Virginia tells the often untold or overlooked histories of the city.
The sites and stories in this guide are rarely found in traditional travel guides or tourist websites. As a result, the guide seeks to decenter long-prominent histories of the city that focus on English colonizers, Confederate soldiers, and white elites who created and enforced extensive systems of political, economic, and social control, like segregation. Instead, this guide highlights individuals and communities who have greatly impacted the history and fabric of Richmond but whose stories we hear much less often. This guide will pay particular attention to sites in the city that have been under-memorialized, if remembered at all; thus it will pay particular attention to the histories of Native peoples, Africans, African Americans, women, LGBTQ folks, and the histories of working class and poor people. In other words, it seeks to memorialize and make visible those too often left out of the history-making of the city.
Contributors
Melissa Ooten
Melissa Ooten directs a social justice program at the University of Richmond. Her teaching and research examine issues of gender and race in social movement building. She has lived in Central Virginia since 1999.
Jason Sawyer
Jason Sawyer is a community practitioner-scholar and Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University. His work centers community organizing, applied arts, and transformative social justice work. He has lived most of his life in Central Virginia and continues to do community work in both Richmond and Hampton Roads.