|
|
Archeology Tells Story of an Earlier Jackson Ward
Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site within Jackson Ward
celebrates the achievements of America’s first female African
American bank president and prominent figure within numerous
civil rights organizations. Development of the park included
rehabilitation of the adjacent structures and landscapes for visitor
orientation and exhibits; a task compounded by severe drainage problems.
The engineering solution required removal of virtually all of the soil
and associated archeological deposits behind 114 East Leigh Street,
the home of Lillian Payne, the secretary of the Independent Order of
Saint Luke and associate of Maggie Walker. In consultation with the
Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources and the
Advisory Council for Historic Preservation, the archeological
deposits were excavated to recover the information they contained
on life in Jackson Ward.
|
|
|
Artifacts Reveal Patterns of Everyday Life
The excavations revealed changes
in the organization of the informal spaces in the back yards where
a personal esthetic could be expressed as opposed to the
fixed Italiante facades of the houses built on formal patterns.
They also revealed the patterns of everyday life as glimpsed
through representative artifacts.
Artifacts of devotion, of play, and personal adornment attest to
the concerns and joys shared by its inhabitants as they went
about the work of their lives and their community. The information
is also important in developing archeological measures of status
and ethnicity so that other African American sites may be
identified and understood in the scope of the
American experience
|
Jackson Ward in Richmond, Virginia
was the largest African American entrepreneurial district
in the South during the first half of the twentieth century.