Southside

South Richmond has a long history of industry. The first iron production facility in North America was established by English settlers at Falling Creek in 1619. Later in the 18th Century, a port town known as Warwick was established, where ships could unload their goods and passengers to travel up Warwick Road to points west of Richmond. Warwick was destroyed by Benedict Arnold during the Revolutionary War. The present-day Port of Richmond Deepwater Terminal is located there now.

After the destruction of Warwick, the Town of Manchester became the dominant port for areas south of the James River. Enslaved African people were imported and sold to plantations at Manchester. Early railroads brought coal from Midlothian and tobacco from Chesterfield for export. After the Civil War, Manchester became an independent city under Virginia law, just like its twin north of the river, Richmond.

Manchester was always home to a significant Black population, and in 1882 activists successfully pressured the city into opening a school for Black citizens. A Black teacher named James H. Blackwell became its principal in 1888, and the school’s first class graduated in 1891 under a curriculum developed by Blackwell. The school and the neighborhood around it were later named in his honor.

Development around Manchester was spurred by the arrival of electric streetcars in 1889, giving rise to neighborhoods like Forest Hill, Woodland Heights, and Swansboro. The streetcars and steam railroads also connected Manchester with areas south, along a corridor stretching all the way down to Petersburg. In 1910, Manchester agreed to be annexed by the City of Richmond, creating the River City we know today.

When the automobile rose to prominence after World War II, suburban development sprawled around U.S. Highway 1. White Flight from South Richmond to Chesterfield County was rapid, leading to extreme disinvestment in Southside and an increasingly Black urban population. In an effort to curb growing Black political power and regain some of the property taxes Whites had been paying, the City of Richmond annexed large swaths of Chesterfield County; this ended up driving White reisdents even further out into the County. The annexations stopped in the 1970s after Chesterfield County sued the City of Richmond.

Southside has a long and complicated history of Black political struggle, disinvestment, and redevelopment. Our goal in Southside is to create high quality, affordable home ownership opportunities to help preserve its racial and economic diversity.