Opening July 14, 2025
Exhibition Gallery | Monday–Saturday, 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Join us for the opening celebration on July 17 with guided tours, information booths from community partners and a panel discussion with the exhibition team. View our calendar to learn more.
The Library’s free exhibition on the history of Richmond’s Jackson Ward neighborhood, “House to Highway: Reclaiming a Community History,” will explore the historic district that was once the center of Richmond’s Black community through the lens of the Skipwith-Roper family. Using a combination of archival records, maps and photographs from the Library’s collection, the exhibition covers a period from 1767 through the 1950s, when eminent domain displaced many residents and businesses of Jackson Ward for the construction of the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike.
The exhibition is presented in partnership with The JXN Project (JXN), a historic preservation nonprofit organization dedicated to capturing the pivotal role of the ward in the Black American experience as one of the country’s first historically registered Black urban neighborhoods.
Presented with generous funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities with additional support from the Community Foundation, Virginia Humanities and 12 On Your Side.
What is Jackson Ward?
The city of Richmond created Jackson Ward in 1871 as a gerrymandered political district designed to limit Black political power by encompassing as many Black voters as possible. Its original boundaries stretched across northwest Richmond, where the Skipwith–Roper Cottage stood, and down to Shockoe Valley. After the passage of the 1902 state constitution that removed almost all Black voters from the rolls, the ward as a political unit was disbanded, and the term “Jackson Ward” then designated a Black neighborhood hedged in by segregation.
Black Richmonders built their own vibrant institutions and sustained them even as their political power eroded. As one of the original “Black Wall Streets,” Jackson Ward became the crown jewel for Black Richmond. Burial societies of the antebellum years grew into insurance companies, while fraternal orders thrived and businesses and banks were developed, such as the country’s first banks to be owned and operated by a Black man and Black woman. The city’s sixth ward also became known as a “Harlem of the South.” Construction of the Richmond–Petersburg Turnpike in the 1950s sliced the community in two and displaced more than 1,000 residents and business owners in Jackson Ward.
The Skipwith-Roper Family
In the wake of the American Revolution, Abraham Peyton Skipwith sought his freedom and bought himself out of slavery in 1789. He bought several lots in Richmond, becoming the first Black homeowner in the community that became known as Jackson Ward. Before his death in 1799 he bought his wife Cloe and his granddaughter Maria out of slavery and provided for his granddaughter’s education. In 1805 Maria married Peter Roper, a free man and a skilled artisan who helped build the city. The family enjoyed financial independence, and before and after the Civil War the Ropers and their children helped construct a new Black independence through entrepreneurship, community building, and political action.
When the last descendant of Abraham Peyton Skipwith died in 1900 the house he had lived in passed to the Coleman family. They retained ownership until 1957, when the Richmond–Petersburg Turnpike Authority and the City of Richmond seized the property by eminent domain. A white preservationist recognized the architectural importance of Skipwith’s house, purchased it for approximately $25 in 1957, and moved it to Goochland County, where it still remains. The JXN Project introduced “The Skipwith–Roper Homecoming” as an initiative to reconstruct the home of Abraham Skipwith in the community where he once lived.
