550 Boulevard, Colonial Heights
On April 4, 1987, six hundred African Americans organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) marched to the Colonial Heights Courthouse to protest the near all-white town located just north of the majority Black city of Petersburg.
They were met by an equally sized crowd of white residents waving confederate flags. One white resident held a sign that read: “We and our children are safe. We don’t need murders, rapes, stabbings and robberies. Check our crime rate,” implying that crime would increase if more African Americans moved into town.
At the end of the two-mile march, Rev. Curtis Harris, Virginia’s SCLC president, taped a list of demands to the courthouse doors. Protestors called it an economic protest as African Americans could spend their money in Colonial Heights but could not live there. Demands included setting aside a percentage of jobs specifically for Black workers at nearby Southpark Mall, which was under construction at the time. They also wanted the town to hire teachers trained at nearby Virginia State University, a Historically Black University, to work in the town’s school system and to establish a biracial committee to examine the town’s race relations.
Colonial Heights had incorporated in 1948 as its own independent city. The town experienced its greatest period of growth in the 1950s and 1960s as white residents moved out of neighboring Petersburg largely due to school desegregation. Given the town’s overwhelming whiteness, it became known by the moniker “Colonial Whites.” In the 1980 census, only 37 of Colonial Heights 16,000 residents identified as African American. In 1986, Tony McDonald became the first Black student to graduate from Colonial Heights High School. The following year, the year of the Courthouse protest march, six Black students were enrolled in the Colonial Heights public school system, which served over 2800 students.
This march called attention to the fact that more than two decades after segregation legally ended, white power structures still severely limited housing, educational, and employment opportunities for Black residents. Mayor James McNeer acknowledged that City Council would review the marchers’ demands, but city officials implemented none of them. In 2019, educational advisory group EdBuild, which examines issues of racial and funding equity in school districts nationwide that border one another, found the most severe gaps between the Petersburg and Colonial Heights districts. Almost all of Petersburg’s students are non-white while the majority of Colonial Height students are white, and Colonial Heights receives an additional $3000-5000 per student in annual funding than neighboring Petersburg.
To learn more:
- Baker, Donald. “SCLC March Draws Jeers in Va. City.” Washington Post April 5, 1987.
Image: Colonial Heights Courthouse. Courtesy of Kim Lee Schmidt, 2020.