Honorary brown street signs soon will go up in Jackson Ward to call attention to 14 deceased Black men and women who made a lasting imprint on Richmond and often on the nation.

They range from newspaperman and banker John Mitchell Jr. to modern-day culture promoter Lorna Pinckney.

On Monday, Richmond City Council took time to celebrate the individuals and recognize the ambitious effort to keep their memories alive for new generations before unanimously approving the project.

The approval came on a night when the council also assented to City Hall teaming with the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority to apply for a federal grant to jump start the redevelopment of the Gilpin Court public housing community. Gilpin Court is in the northern portion of Jackson Ward that was split off when the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, now part of Interstate 95, was constructed through the Black section of the city.

City Councilmembers Katherine Jordan, 2nd District, and Ann-Frances Lambert, 3rd District, spearheaded the honorary street sign initiative that began during the administration of Mayor Dwight C. Jones to spotlight Black individuals who had made a difference in the city.

The two council members joined to carry out a proposal advanced earlier this year by The JXN Project, the creation of sisters Enjoli Moon and Dr. Sesha Joi Pritchett-Moon.

The sisters launched the project to showcase significant individuals who made a difference in Jackson Ward, which was once the financial, business and social center of Richmond’s Black community. Passage is expected to lead to a festive, multi-faceted unveiling ceremony once the signs have been installed.

The signs will honor:

Rosa Dixon Bowser, the first Black teacher hired in Richmond after public schools were launched and whose 47-year career included founding the first statewide organization to represent Black educators; Lucy Goode Brooks, founder of an orphanage for Black children that still operates today as the Friends Association for Children; and the Rev. William Washington Browne, who founded a fraternal order and chartered the first Black financial institution in the United States.

Also, Neverett Alexander Eggleston Sr., who owned a once prominent Jackson Ward hotel named for him that became a center of NAACP organizing and housed touring Black performers during segregation; Charles Sydney Gilpin, the first Black actor to rise to stardom in dramatic roles on Broadway in New York; Lillie Ann Estes, an outspoken community activist and organizer who fought for policies to uplift the poor in Gilpin Court and citywide; and Oliver White Hill Sr., an attorney who played a key role in the legal attack on segregation in Virginia and the nation.

Also, Giles Beecher Jackson, the first Black attorney to represent a client before the Supreme Court of Virginia and a promoter of Black business advancement who organized the first exhibit on Black progress at the Jamestown tricentennial in 1907; Mr. Mitchell, who fought lynching and segregation and promoted Black civil rights for 45 years as editor of the Richmond Planet, represented Jackson Ward on City Council, founded a bank and led a yearlong boycott of segregated street cars in Richmond in 1904 that bankrupted the company; and Ms. Pinckney, poet, artist and creative force best known for founding and leading the long-running Tuesday Verses that provided an open microphone for poets.

Also, Alfred Douglas “A.D.” Price Sr., a blacksmith who opened one of the first Black funeral homes in Virginia and built it into one of the largest establishments of its kind in the

country; Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, a tap dancing great who became a movie star and earned national entertainment acclaim; Abraham Preston Skipwith, the first Black person to own a home in Jackson Ward; and Maggie Lena Walker, who rose to leadership of a Black fraternal group and used her position to fight for Black and women’s rights and become the first Black woman to charter and serve as president of a bank in the United States.