The Virginia Board of Historic Resources recently approved seven new historical markers that will be placed along roadsides in Virginia. The signs will highlight the City of Richmond’s first municipal African burial ground; three communities founded by formerly enslaved African-Americans after the Civil War; and the life and work of Arthur Crudup, a 20th century blues musician of the Eastern Shore whose song, “That’s All Right,” launched the career of Elvis Presley.

Richmond’s First Municipal African Burial Ground

Richmond’s First Municipal African Cemetery, historically known as the “Burial Ground for Negroes,” came into existence in 1799 on land the city acquired in what is now Shockoe Bottom. The burial ground contained the graves of enslaved and free Africans and people of African descent. The cemetery’s location also was the site of one of the local gallows and, among other indignities, experienced frequent flooding that disturbed burials. Free Blacks petitioned for a new cemetery, which led the city to open the nearby Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground in 1816. By the 1950s, much of the original cemetery was covered by Interstate 95 and parking lots. Starting in the early 2000s, Richmond activists led a successful campaign to reclaim, protect, and memorialize the city’s First Municipal African Cemetery, which now is known as the Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground. The marker’s proposed location is East Broad Street, just east of I-95.

Washington Park noted for St. John Baptist Church, Market Inn

Emancipated African-Americans who settled in the city of Richmond after the Civil War organized St. John Baptist Church in ca. 1868 and built a sanctuary in 1893 in the neighborhood now known as Washington Park. First Baptist Church was established in 1921. The Washington Park community included the Market Inn nightclub, which was listed in the Green Book, a guide for Black travelers during Jim Crow, and featured performances by such acts as Redd Foxx, The Shirelles, and The Drifters. In 1914, the city annexed a part of the neighborhood from Henrico County before acquiring the rest of the area in 1942. Richmond’s second Black mayor, Dr. Roy West, grew up in Washington Park.

Founding fathers

In Cumberland County, the Rev. Reuben T. Coleman (1844-1909), born into slavery, became an entrepreneur after the Civil War and established Lucyville, which in the 1890s, included a bank, post office, newspaper, and a mineral springs resort that attracted Black and White visitors from throughout the country. Rev. Coleman, who served as the pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church, challenged segregation during the Reconstruction era as a local Republican leader and office-holder. His brother-in-law, Shed Dungee, who was also enslaved at birth, represented the area in the House of Delegates from 1879 to 1882 and supported the Readjuster Party, a biracial political coalition founded in Richmond with the goal to re- duce the stateís pre-war debt.

The origins of the Belleville community in the City of Suffolk can be traced to 1896, when William Saunders Crowdy (1847-1908), who escaped enslavement during the Civil War, founded in Kansas the Church of God and Saints of Christ, which today is a predominantly African-American Judaic community with members and missions in the United States, Jamaica, and Africa. In 1903, Mr. Crowdy bought 40 acres of land in Suffolk. The site became the international headquarters of the church in 1919, and the Belleville community developed around the church in the 1920s. At the height of its existence, Belleville encompassed more than 700 acres and included a sacred tabernacle, farms, a school, a home for widows and orphans, stores, an electric plant, a music hall and athletic facilities.

Black pillars with Virginia roots

Born enslaved in 1842 at the Shirley plantation in Charles City County, Stephen Bates eventually became the earliest-known Black sheriff in the North. Mr. Bates was a domestic worker at Shirley before claiming his freedom during the Civil War. He later worked for a Union officer at Harrison’s Landing in Charles City County, and left Virginia with the army in August 1862. Mr. Bates later was a coachman for Frederick E. Woodbridge, a state of Vermont congressman. In 1869, Mr. Bates moved with Woodbridge to Vergennes, Vt., and starting in 1875, was the city’s constable for four years.

The white electorate selected Mr. Bates as sheriff in 1879, and he was re-elected as sheriff until appointed chief of police. He died in 1907.

The blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup was born in Forest, Miss., on Aug. 24, 1905. Sometimes referred to as “The Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Mr. Crudup gained prominence as a recording artist in Chicago in the 1940s. In 1954, Elvis Presley’s career took off after he recorded a version of “That’s All Right,” a song originally written and performed by Mr. Crudup in Chicago. Mr. Presley later covered two more of Crudup’s songs, “My Baby Left Me” and “So Glad You’re Mine.” Others who covered Mr. Crudup included The Beatles, B.B. King, and Elton John. A self-taught musician who lived through poverty and oppression, Mr. Crudup rarely received royalties for his work and instead supported his family as a laborer and farm worker. He moved to Franktown in Northampton County in ca. 1960 and performed with his sons, James, George and Jonas, as The Malibus in the Eastern Shore communities of Weirwood and Nassawadox. Mr. Crudup died on March 28, 1974, and is buried in Nassawadox.

Fostering a future for Black people

A forthcoming marker in Nottoway County will recall the Luther H. Foster High School, which provided secondary education to Black students during the Jim Crow era of segregation. Constructed at a cost of $680,000, the school first welcomed students in 1950, and was named for Halifax County native Dr. Luther Hilton Foster (1888-1949), a well-known leader in Black higher education who served as the fourth president of what is now Virginia State University from 1943 until his death in 1949. The school closed in 1970 after the county fully desegregated its schools.