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                    COLORED RICHMOND

                    By E. D. Caffee.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, lies 115 miles 
south of Washington, and ninety miles 
from the mouth of the James River at
Chesapeake Bay. Originally this modern
Rome was "delightfully situated on seven
hills overhanging the James River." The
city site was founded September 19, 1735,
by Colonel William Byrd and seven years
later it was formally established as a 
town by a special act of the Virginia As-
sembly, in 1742. But soon the white set-
tlers drove back the Indian savages to 
far beyond the tidewater settlement.
Hence, in 1779, the seat of the State Gov-
ernment was moved from Williamsburg to
Richmond, which was incorporated as a uty
in 1782.
   In 1781, the forty-eighth year after Rich-
mond was founded, its population was only
1800, over 900 of whom where Negro slaves.
In 1916, when the city was 181 years old, 
the total population numbered 156,687, of 
which 62,676 were Negroes.
   It is evident, then, that Negroes were in
Richmond before and at the time of its
founding, many of them having worked on 
the farm of Nathaniel Bacon, the rebel.
If the truth had been written, we would
be able to say that Negroes cleared the 
forest on which the city is founded. An
inscription cornerstone of the old Bacon
foundation stands near Hancock and Broad
Streets.
   As Richmond, located at the foot of the
falls, became the head of commerce and
industries, it also became the chief mart of
the slave traders' traffic-"The sum of all
villainies." As early as March 29, 1779, in
the Virginia Gazette appeared the follow-
ing notice of the sale of slaves: "Five like-
ly Virginia-born Negroes will be sold for
cash, loan certificate or tobacco." Lum-
kins' slave jail, in which reopened in 1857
what is now Virginia Union University, was
the "old slave pen," in which Negroes were
kept for sale and safety and from which
they were transported to Virginia, the Caro-
linas, Georgia, and far south as Ala-
bama. Could it have been conceived that a 
place like this could be so completely trans-
formed? Facts, surely in this case, become
stranger than fiction after fifty years.

Sunday, April 2, 1865, General Lee dis-
patched the following message to Jefferson
Davis, who was found in church: "My line
is broken in three places and Richmond
must be evacuated."" Mr. Lumkin, the keep-
er of the slave-traders' jail, and whose wife,
Mary Jane Lumkins, was colored, heard of
Mr. Davis' order of evacuation and "made
up a coffle of fifty men, women, and chil-
dren in his jail yard, within pistol shot of
Davis' parlor window and a stone's throw 
from the monumental church," and hurried
them to the Danville depot. This sad and 
weeping fifty, in handcuffs and chains, was
the last slave coffle to tread the soil of
America. As the Confederate government
was on the move from the doomed city,
there was a jumble of boxes, chests, trunks,
valises, carpet bags, a crowd of excited
men sweating as never before, women with
disheveled hair, unmindful of their ward-
robes and wringing their hands, children
crying in the crowd, and sentinels guarding
each entrance to the train, pushing back
at the point of the bayonet the panic-stick-
en multitude." But there was no room for
Mr. Lumkin and his slaves on the train
nor in the world.
   At the fall of Richmond, therefore, fell
the auction block of human traffic. While
Negroes of the West celbrate Emancipa-
ion Day as September 22, 1862, the date
when the preliminary proclamation was is-
sued; and others of the South and North,
the first day of January, 1863, the day of
its majority; Richmonders celebrate the
third day of April, when richmond fell.
   Negro emancipation not only freed Ne-
groes, but it also freed the white man, for
it was not until 1870 that a public school
system was established in the state. One
year later there were 1915 Negro children
enrolled, with 72 teachers, 12 of whom
were Negroes. Even unto this day, with
but one or two exceptions, all the prin-
cipal's of the Negro schools have been white.
Since the inception of the public school law,
a rare change has taken place. The 1915
enrollment increased to 9,911 pupils with
225 Negro teachers. From the church
buildings to old dilapidated rooms, the
school property for Negro education has in-
creased until it is now valued at $256,-
685.23. In spite of the enlarged oppor-
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125
ONE OF THE BUILDINGS OF VIRGINIA UNION UNIVERSITY
tunity, all the buildings are overcrowded.
To instance a case: Valley School, the ca-
parity is 746, the attendance is 880.
   It was a strange situation when the 
cradle of the white man's independence be-
came the market of Negro bondage. It was
here in Richmond that Patrick Henry de-
livered his deathless speech and closed with 
the words: "Is life so dear and peace so 
sweet as to be purchased at the price of 
chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty
God! I know not what course others may
take; but as for me, give me liberty or
give me death." It is difficult how the
place that gave birth to such immortality
should hold as chattle in chains a slave of 
any color. But in spite of this anomaly, 
the relations of the races in the Confed-
erase capital have remained very amicable,
a fact just as strange as the other. A 
friendship has grown up here between man-
ters and servants such as is found nowhere
else in all the South. This love or friend-
liness is an indefinable subtle sentiment.
The spirit of the old "master" is still
marching on and the old Negro is still 
marching on, too.
   In spite of this friendliness between the 
two races, Richmond, so far as the Negro
population is concerned, is still charac-
termed by lack of municipal protection. This
probably is the gravest problem the Ne-
gro citizens here face. In addition to the
"Jim Crow" transportation system and seg-
regated residential sections, municipal dis-
criminations in the most glaring form ex-
tend from the educational system through-
out the field of sanitation as seen in dry
closets, lack of city water and sewerage, in-
adequate public protection in poorly lighted
streets, badly constructed streets and houses, 
etc. There are seven dumps and crema-
tories in the segregated Negro residential
sections.
   The legal segregation of the races only
makes more grievous this sanitary eye-
sore of colored Richmond. The assessed
value of Negro property is four million
dollars.
   When the question of organization is
raised, it is said that Richmond is super-
organized--there are wheels in wheels, fra-
ternities, and societies, and yet Richmond
seems unnecessarily divisible. It sNegroes
do not unite themselves solidly enough to 
fight segregation nor anything else effect-