The Ward
well, it wont be long until we get everything done and move in. Probally in a few weeks or so. The house is in Jackson Ward, in richmond of course, and right near the famous Bojangles monument, ha. But let me give my thoughts on this for the moment and a bit of background brought to you by my education in urban studies class. There are postives and negatives living in jackson ward. It is a historic black neighborhood, where it was home to many freed blacks after the civil war, and quickly became a economic center for them. It housed many of the first black owned businesses, like banks and law firms, but lets not forget the clubs and resturants, and thus was known as the "black wall-street". Also we must note that many rising talents in the music industry regularly played at the famous Hippadome club in jackson ward, furthering the popularity of the neighborhood, some even called it the harlem of the south due to its cultural center for blacks. This all slowly crumbled due to blacks moving north to get away from the jim crow laws and after the world wars due to the govt' policies on breaking up cultural centers, as it was seen as dangerous, almsot unamerican, to have a area dense with one group of people...(this was B.S). Today it is one of the few historic black neighborhoods in the nation, and has seen better days. But since 2003 Richmond has been promoting the revitalization of its historic neiborhoods and providing insentives for rebuilding. So this also has an unseen effect, partially due to VCU's presence also. Many afluent people are buying out the historic homes and renovating them, then renting them out to students or selling them for more than people who would normally live there can pay, thus taking away from the traditional neighborhood. The population that has usually resided there were middle to lower class black families...yes families. But now that you throw in students in the mix, who are renting and have more money to spend, this changes the impression of the neighborhood, and many families move out and are sometimes even forced out. The renovation is a good and beautiful thing, but when property values increase, lowerclass homeowners are forced to sell because they can not live in that area anymore, mainly from increased taxes and economic pressure. So Richmond's program recoginizes this also and provide tax credits to renavators when the homeowner will actually be living in the house, no renting. Im sure there are many other factors at work here, but as I walk by and see our middle aged black neighbors I can only guess at what they think of who I am and why I'm living there. Am I ashamed becasue i know some of the detrimental factors that i may be contributing to...no, because i know i will do my best to help the people that need it most, and of course once i get a talking with the neighbors I think they won't have a problem with a guy with dreads.
jackson ward