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Feeling The Weight: An Interview With Jonathan Russell of The Head And The Heart

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My great uncle used to fall asleep with his eyes open. If you didn’t already know Albert, you might’ve thought he was dead — shot or poisoned like some pale stiff in an old black and white movie. On your hands and knees looking around for shell casings or a bottle of arsenic until you heard him snore. I never met Albert because he’d fallen asleep for good, long before I was born, but there were stories and photos. I generally spend a lot of time alone, mostly chain-smoking cigarettes and overanalyzing the past. Sometimes I sit still for so long, I wonder if I look dead or asleep, just like Albert. Then, I wonder if I am actually one of the two and haven’t realized it yet. 

If you close your eyes and recall the last two years, maybe you can relate. Maybe not. 

Some people close their eyes during car accidents because they want to hide from the pain, forfeit sight to fear. I might not have closed my eyes during the pandemic, but I was still asleep at the wheel driving through it. Maybe even before. None of this did me any good, just protected me from reality. A lot of defense mechanisms get us nowhere. Life can do that. 

Jonathan Russell of The Head and The Heart seemed to touch on something similar in “Hurts (But It Goes Away)” from the band’s new album Every Shade of Blue. Russell sings, “Coming back together / Different but the same / I know that I’m not the only one / Who feels the weight of it.” That sentiment seems to be all over Every Shade of Blue. Not heavy handed. Not self-righteous hipster wisdom. Not a finger pointed at anyone but the person Jon sees in the mirror and the people looking in the mirror with him. Seems like the entire band is pointing at the same reflection.

We all came back from the pandemic with something missing. Maybe it was years. Maybe it was loved ones. Maybe it was a piece of ourselves. Maybe it was the wool over our eyes.

It’s good to see people getting back together. 

Released on April 29th, Every Shade of Blue is the fifth album by The Head and The Heart and their third release for Warner Bros/Reprise. They played the single “Virginia (Wind In The Night)” live on the Tonight Show in March, and the single “Hurts (But It Goes Away)” May 5th on Jimmy Kimmel. The Head and The Heart begin their US headlining tour in support of their new album this month in St. Petersburg, Florida. They will be making stops at the Hangout Music Fest in Alabama, the Ladder To The Moon festival in New Mexico, and a SOLD OUT September 15th date at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado.

When I got on the phone with Jon last week, I didn’t really know what to ask him. Most of the time these days it feels like I’ve forgotten how to talk to people. Speaking on the phone is awkward now. The ringer stays on silent. We all came back missing something from the pandemic. I pretended Jon and I were sitting on one of the benches in Jefferson Park in Church Hill instead of being separated by 2,630 miles. We both call this city home. I used to go to that park to sit when I had something to think about. We’ve all done a lot of pretending the last bunch of years. It’s good to be in a familiar headspace when you’re going to start a conversation with a stranger about his new record and the weight of all of it.

Ryan Kent: How do you think the head and the heart of the United States has changed since the pandemic? It seems like you were using the single, “Virginia (Wind In The Night),” as kind of a metaphor for that. Or at least that’s what I was thinking when I was listening to it.

Jonathan Russell: Well, it’s funny. I mean, I feel like that definitely, intentionally left that open for interpretation, because not everyone’s from Virginia. So, you know, the moment you get too specific, some people start tuning out, think it’s not really relevant to them. So, personally, it’s about a place for myself in terms of that song — this is almost a two-question part here. But in terms of the “Virginia (Wind In The Night)” song itself — yeah, I guess I see what you’re saying. I agree. There are some layers and some symbolic references to it. But really, I guess, the literal sense of me seeing it and feeling it was me coming and going from Richmond, Virginia over the years — from, basically, 2004 until now. Seeing myself almost as a reflection — like, one place as a reference point as my life changes, in terms of my personality, my personal growth, my actual work. When I left Richmond the first time, I was a busboy. So, to come back [as] a professional musician was quite a mindfuck. But yeah, the song “Virginia,” to me, was my way of tracking time, and time changing, and yourself. 

I find it interesting to use a place almost like a mirror. Where you can have the perception of who you are, and who you’ve turned into. [I’m] 37 now. Instead of writing songs about missing home and leaving home, you start becoming a little more self-reflective. And not to mention, just personal age, on top of what the last few years were like. So, to go back to your initial question: “How do you feel the state of the head and the heart is in the United States?” [laughs] It’s interesting. Actually, last night I was talking to someone. Everyone was going through this sense of isolation, this sense of panic, fear, anxiety. Learning how to cope, learning how to stabilize yourself. Not really being able to rely on anything, necessarily, other than your own ability to cope and move through the world, and decide how you want to do that. In a strange way, it almost recalibrated humanity, you know what I mean? 

That sounds like a pretty heavy statement, and I don’t even know what I mean [laughs]. Like I said, this was a conversation I was having last night, so it’s not like some fully [formed] concept yet. But in a strange way, after feeling relatively disconnected from society, I feel like… maybe I’m just searching for that silver lining of what just happened the last few years — as I tend to do, even in my songwriting. I think there was something that touched everyone and acts as a calibration system for all of us. So, what that means exactly? Who fucking knows? [laughs]

RK: Has it influenced the rest of the record, along with the departure of [founding member] Josiah Johnson?

JR: Well, in terms of the Josiah Johnson thing — I feel that’s like when you’re leaving a town, and you can see more than one street. And then the further you get away, you just see the one that’s behind you. Josiah Johnson is a cross street, and that’s no longer in the rearview mirror. I mean, we’re homies, but his story is his story. And our story is our story. I see very few intersections anymore — other than our friendship, which is beautiful. In terms of how the last couple of years would have shaped the music, I think, in kind of a microcosm way, what we chose to do as a band was to take advantage of the physical isolation and realize what it was allowing us and giving us, for the first time maybe ever, was the ability to have real conversations as a band, as a family, as a polygamous marriage, or however you want to look at it. It was the first time that we hadn’t had to walk into some sort of really intense situation following a conversation. Normally, we’re all together, and the last thing you want to do is have somebody on the verge of a breakdown. [Then] it’s an interview, and then it’s TV, or then it’s a concert, and it’s a meet and greet, or it’s radio, or whatever it is. You always just have to put a band-aid on it. And we did that for 10 years. 

So, we brought in a therapist and a specialist. Somebody to be like a referee for us and create a safe space. And as much as I am really burned out on having to be on camera for a zoom call, that did allow this — little subtle, unintentional things. You can read people’s body language. People listen better. There’s a vast personality difference in this band. People will talk over people, and some people care about that, and some people don’t. But bringing in someone to work with us and work on our communication skills, essentially put the focus on mental health, in that regard. The last few years gave us a framework to do that. But I think it’s the work we’ve done on our personal relationships with one another that had the biggest impact on our music. People are respecting each other and listening to one another and trusting each other. So, to circle back to your initial question on the greater state of the United States or just the world, anything we learned as a band, it’s about communication, and feeling respected, and feeling like there’s a trust in the room. You don’t have to agree with everything everyone thinks or says, just give them the fucking space. Give them the floor. 

RK: You should feel comfortable being able to do that in your place.

JR: If there’s anything I’ve noticed from the six people that I’ve known for 12 years — that’s easier said than done. I mean, it’s an even a larger conversation, going into strangers, having that type of trust with total strangers. There’s a lot of rebuilding to do. There’s a lot of communication. There’s a lot of love that needs to be spread around. Not to get all hippie on it, but what good is doing the opposite? It’s just not working for us. So yeah, I feel like I do enjoy the tendency to zoom out and zoom back in. But I don’t want to pretend to be able to speak on all of these things. I guess I can only really speak to what the six of us went through in [these] last few years. If there’s anything I can take from that, this was a band that was ready to say, “this might be our last one.” If we can come back from that and make one of the most vulnerable and bold records we’ve ever made — other than our first one, because we didn’t even know one another — to me, that gives me hope.

RK: Each album by The Head and The Heart has increased its lean towards pop instrumentation. Even more so with Every Shade of Blue. Was that a conscious thing, or was that just an evolution of the band?

JR: I think maybe both. I started collaborating with different writers, with different producers, in my off time. I think maybe I was just in a place where Living Mirage, the previous record, was, so… I think it had to happen. I was reading an interview that I did three years ago, around that record, and it blows my mind how heavy I was. How heavy my thoughts were. So, it doesn’t surprise me that we made a record that’s kind of a deep purple. Heavy colors [are] attached to that record in my mind. So, once that was out of my system, I was looking for a lime green and a yellow, like a bright orange. I ended up working with Jesse Shatkin, who I met in Los Angeles. [He] does a lot of pop, and we just had fun when we were in together. “Tiebreaker” [from Every Shade of Blue] was one of the first songs I ever did with him, and it was just so light and fun, but also compelling in a way, sonically. I think I use this phrase somewhere else, but honestly, it just hits it on the head. He kind of champions my freak flag a little bit. 

That song “Tiebreaker” is pretty unusual, at least from a band who started out with an acoustic-guitar folk message. To me, that was so much fun. There’s so many types, there’s some angles to everyone’s personality. And if you’re fortunate enough, as we are, to have a fifth record, eventually you’re going to start seeing more and more of these individuals. And a song like “Tiebreaker” — working with a producer like Jesse Shatkin just really added this new layer of trust and confidence into a personality of mine that I wasn’t necessarily always exposing to people, unless it was just for fun. Behind closed doors, just having fun with shit. I think for the longest time I was really drawn to more of a serious tone. At least that’s maybe why I was using songwriting. I needed to get some heavier, serious topics off my shoulders. You know, coming as a pendulum. Reacting to being in quite a heavy state during Living Mirage — it just felt really nice to… not keep it light, there’s still real topics on this record, [but] kind of what you were saying initially, pop can kind of make you feel good.

RK: Looking at each album, over time it’s like looking at a version of yourself, and you have an opinion of each record, which will evolve as you evolve. With that being said, how do you think your opinion of Every Shade of Blue will evolve over time?

JR: Yeah, that’s a great question, and great insight you have there. I guess where we’re at now is kind of its infancy, in terms of being introduced into the world. Other people can now touch it and listen to it and critique it, both in good and bad ways. Which I think is fair, and as it should be done. To me, it feels like a stamp in time of the band’s relationship. Whereas I really feel like, for a while, I was always sort of thinking of records in terms of my relationship with myself. This is the first record where I’m hearing it and viewing it, and the imagery it gives me are memories of this group having breakthrough moments. Yes. It feels like a group. 

RK: Now, it’s everybody’s success. 

JR: Yes! We played a really small but beautiful acoustic set last night here in Los Angeles, at this place called the Winston House. It was just really half the band doing the acoustic set. If you watch in your present, with those around you — this whole ride, this whole life experience, this whole putting a smile on someone’s face and making them feel good or whatever… It’s like, just be present with those around you. Let their beauty and their pain and their excitement and their nervousness, let that go through you too. This is maybe a weird way of getting to something we had already mentioned, but it being about the group just feels like you don’t have to be the sole provider, or the only person in charge who is making sure shit works. I feel like we are unraveling something that you and I have already said, so maybe I’ll just leave it at that. 

RK: It’s like a new comfort level that you have. I would think being able to do that is almost like stretching completely, to your full potential. In your head, when you were making Every Shade of Blue, did you feel like you were making a great record? Like you hear artists say, “I knew that was a hit when I wrote it.” And they’re not being arrogant, they just had that feeling. Did you have that feeling at all when you were writing and recording this?

JR: Yeah, well, you know… what’s funny is, I feel like in the inception stage of certain songs, I definitely feel that way, from time to time. I think because of the void in which this record was being made. By that, I mean the last few years. It was almost scary to feel that way and then have, like, a vast silence come back to you. I’ve never questioned my own barometer so heavily, and I think maybe through that process, I let go of trying to decide whether something is really good or not.

RK: Yeah, I understand. You quit questioning and, like I said, you kind of stretched, and were just like, “this is good.” The Head and The Heart are playing in Richmond at the Altria on September 17th, which is two days before my 40th birthday. You said you’re 37 years old, and you’ve written five records. Toured all over the place. You’ve done a lot of stuff in 37 years. Weird question here: not like any of these have been fucking normal or anything, but what advice would you give to a 40-year-old? 

JR: [laughing] Oh god. I don’t know. Is the younger supposed to be giving advice to the elder? I’m not sure. 

RK: I mean, we can all take advice [laughing].

JR: I don’t mean to call you an elder [laughing].

RK: We can all take advice from everybody, especially on life experience. I dunno, man. I’m gonna be 40. So…

JR: Right. Start exercising again. [laughing]

RK: Great answer! 

JR: [laughing] In all honesty, man, I’ve realized the difference [from] 34 coming off the road, and 37 going back out feels like a different body. And a different mind. I think I took for granted somewhat good genetics, and I’ve always been somewhat athletic. I grew up skateboarding. But it’s time to get fucking real. Especially if I want to go out and feel young, and feel healthy, and feel excited. And able to bend down, smash the fucking pedal and jump back up and seeing like… bro, it’s time to get back out there, man [laughing]. I’m trying to stick to this. I started working with someone to help guide me getting back into it. And it’s honestly, it’s been, like, a week and a half, and it’s very noticeable. So, my advice: take physical health a lot more seriously than you did when you’re 30 or 35 or whatever, you know? Yeah, that’s where I’m at.

RK: I’ve been trying to drink more water. I used to do push-ups. I’m like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do them tomorrow.” And tomorrow comes and I just don’t do anything, so thanks for the reminder. [laughing]

JR: Dude, I’ve even started doing the lady push-ups. I don’t give a shit. I just started doing them. I’m sure at some point, I’ll be able to get back to doing real push-ups, but like, whatever it takes to not feel like you can’t do it. Just eliminate that shit.

RK: It’s only gonna get better if you do it, I guess.  

JR: Yeah. I just normally have a lot of anxiety around doing stuff like this, for the record. I just kind of stew. But there’s been something like an unlock or a release from just doing, like, 30 to 45 minutes of stretching, cardio, whatever it is. Just low impact stuff, because my knees are kind of jacked now from running. But yeah, it just calms you down.

RK: [laughing] I’ll take that advice.

JR: And hopefully, we’ll see you at the Altria Theater, man.  A birthday gift. I mean, I would love to do that for you.

RK: Jesus. That would be great. Thank you very much for that.

JR: Of course, I really enjoyed this interview. It’s like… sneaky, left of center questions. They don’t come out sounding wild or pretentious, but you’ve got a sneaky ability to stay off the obvious.

RK: Man, I didn’t want to ask you the same shit. I wanted it to be like we’re sitting next to each other somewhere, and we got on some weird topics. So, thanks for that, Jon. Mind if I ask you one more? 

JR: Yeah, for sure. 

RK: You were mentioning different shades [before]. I remember reading this interview about Liz Phair, when she was writing Exile In Guyville. Somebody said [Liz Phair] wanted one of these songs to sound [like the color] brown. I never forgot that, because I’d never thought of a sound as a color before. So, to bring it back to Richmond, what’s the color you think of when you think of Richmond?

JR: One color… [pauses] That’s tough. I mean, if we’re talking about the James River — brown [laughing]. I think I have to come at it from a different angle for a minute. What I noticed when I was living in San Francisco for six years and kept my apartment in Church Hill the whole time — and that’s what I’m back into now. Whenever I’ve come back to my apartment, my songs seem to be piano based and more mid-tempo, and I don’t know if that’s just because I needed to contrast from the way I was writing in SF, which was more upbeat and sporadic. To me, Richmond is somewhat grounding, and I’m calmer. I love the fact that I can hear a fucking leaf being blown down the street. The dryness. That kind of like [makes crunching sounds]. That’s what I love about being in Richmond, especially in the east side of it. As often as I used color to describe sound, that place to me is more like a tempo thing. And the tempo, to me, feels calm and mid-tempo, which I love.

The Head And The Heart comes to Richmond’s Altria Theater on Saturday, September 17, with special guests Shakey Graves. Tickets are on sale now at the Altria’s website. The Head And The Heart’s new album, Every Shade Of Blue, is available on vinyl and CD from the band’s website, and can be found on all streaming platforms.

Photos via The Head And The Heart/Facebook

There Goes The Neighborhood: Combating Displacement in Richmond’s Historically Black Neighborhoods

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I grew up in the old Harlem, New York. Where the hot summers would bring the kids outside to run through the fire hydrants that we turned into sprinklers, stoops and railings became the porches that we didn’t have, and the corner store was our very own Walmart of snacks. 125th street, home of the famous Apollo Theater, was the place to get bootleg CDs and DVDs, and the latest Air Force One sneakers. 

I had the opportunity to traverse many cultural spaces by way of being a smart Black kid from the hood, but even after the long days of summer camps and evenings of violin lessons on the lower east side, nothing felt quite like home as much as the 1.4 square miles of my Black, Harlem community. 

In the summer of 2017, Wholefoods came to Harlem, right on 125th street and just a few avenues away from the Apollo.  And well, there went the neighborhood.  Its arrival was indicative of a different Harlem. Up until then, Harlem felt impenetrable to processes I would later learn about as an urban planner – gentrification and displacement, and the inner workings of policies that drove them.

The change that engulfed Harlem is part of a national trend in gentrifying legacy Black cities and neighborhoods across the country – wealthy, white families are moving to non-white, predominantly Black neighborhoods. According to the New York Times, since the year 2000, white residents moving to non-white communities has affected about one in six predominantly African-American census tracts. Inner cities and downtown centers once plagued by disinvestment, to which minorities were relegated, are attracting new development. The insidious nature of the changes happening in communities like Harlem is not simply the emergence of more white faces on Harlem’s streets or the newly built bike lanes. The changes symbolize renewed interest in communities that have long fought for the very resources and amenities that new residents can now access so easily. They also symbolize an erasure of the very Blackness and cultural and social norms that created such a dynamic community. 

Mariah Williams

The sudden interest in Black communities across the country is not, in fact, a sudden process. While the demographic shifts suggest a pattern of individual white households choosing to move to historically Black and disinvested neighborhoods to spur gentrification and eventually displacement, their accomplices include housing policies that both encourage and intensify changes in these Black communities. The gentrification process and the displacement it incites perpetuates patterns of injustice as Black communities are erased, removed from the fabric of reinvested communities, and priced out of the very neighborhoods that once offered affordability. These injustices are deeply rooted in the United States’ long history of intentional disinvestment in Black communities and other communities of color. This disinvestment was aided by federal, state, and local housing policies throughout the country, beginning in the early 20th century. This included practices such as redlining, blockbusting, urban renewal and highway construction, to name a few – the culmination of these interventions disseminated Black neighborhoods throughout the county. Richmond’s Black communities were no exception. 

As the city of Richmond undergoes significant transition, achieving racial equity means implementing policies to combat involuntary displacement of Black residents and to preserve the culture embedded within historic Black communities. 

Neighborhood Change in the City of Richmond

In Richmond, gentrification has been pretty significant in neighborhoods such as Jackson Ward, Church Hill, and more recently, the city’s Northside. As each of these neighborhoods have undergone gentrification, both physical and cultural displacement have occurred. This year, Jackson Ward celebrated its 150th anniversary, which prompted reflections on the changes that the neighborhood has undergone over the last century and how it has endured after decades of forcible displacement of its Black residents. 

What does it mean for a neighborhood, once known as the Harlem of the South, to have transformed to a majority white community, where African-Americans only comprise about 23% of the population? Or when long time residents are forced to move and are replaced by new and younger ones? History and culture is lost, and we lose the benefit of not only learning about the history of a community from those who lived there, but we risk the history being lost altogether if we do not continuously highlight the historical narratives and markers of its Black culture. Trailblazers such as Maggie Lena Walker and Oliver Hill, who helped make the neighborhood such a staple in Richmond’s Black community, are not just figures of the past. Their legacy can remain even as the community transforms and can even light our path forward. 

Church Hill is yet another example of a neighborhood where demographic shifts mirror those happening in historically disinvestment communities throughout the city. Church Hill is one of Richmond’s oldest neighborhoods. Beginning in the late 1950s, the neighborhood experienced significant decline. Development and housing policies gave way to white flight, leaving behind low-income African-Americans to experience decades of disinvestment. That has since changed. Between 2000-2010, the neighborhood began to attract a whiter and more educated population. By 2015, African American households, both renters and homeowners, had declined by 20 percent, after comprising almost 90 percent of households in 2000. Even more striking, in this same period, Black homeowners in Church Hill declined by 23 percent, while white homeowners increased by 159 percent. Home values have grown at the same speed as white folks in the neighborhood. In just four years, between 2010-2014, home values increased by 30 percent, from a median sale price of $165,000 to $215,000 by 2014.

These changes in the demographic make-up of the community should have prompted decision-makers, elected officials, and policymakers to take a closer look at the policies driving such drastic change in the community and attracting residents so unlike the existing ones.

The demographic and housing market shifts are compounded by a contentious cultural shift, a shift that the preservation of Black businesses have been crucial in curtailing. Brookland Park Boulevard, located in Richmond’s Northside and the city’s first streetcar suburb, once served as the physical demarcation of white and Black residents in the neighborhood. Similar to Church Hill, the Northside’s housing market is undergoing significant change and attracting a demographic that was once foreign to the community. However, the presence of Black businesses along this main commercial corridor has been key to the neighborhood maintaining its cultural footprint. These businesses reflect a commitment to making sure that Black culture and families are reflected even as the community changes. More importantly, the types of businesses matter: restaurants, Black hair salons, and barbershops, which in the Black community are of great significance. They have long offered respite for us, serving as gathering spaces to discuss politics, culture, and social issues. 

Mobility vs. Displacement

As difficult as it may be, change is a fact of life. Neighborhoods change, and the people within those neighborhoods change as personal and economic factors drive them to move out of one community and into another. I, for one, have moved countless times in my life. For jobs, for school, or simply out of a desire to be somewhere else. But, it’s important to distinguish the process of this change from the havoc it wreaks on the people who have called a community home. 

Nothing is as simple as being either for or against something. When I hear gentrification, I have a visceral reaction because of how I’ve seen it change my own community, but I know that it denotes a process, not necessarily an outcome. I do not think any Black person who has lived in an under-resourced or impoverished community is against finally getting those resources we have fought so hard for. It’s about more than being against change or investment, or for it, especially when that investment is long overdue. But it is a matter of not feeling disposable, unseen, or unheard as this investment occurs; of not feeling as though the white people moving in are somehow more deserving of paved sidewalks, greenspace, bike paths and grocery stores.  

I don’t believe gentrification has to lead to displacement, and in fact, there are cities across the country where policy has been key to combating involuntary displacement in communities of color. 

Policy got us into this, so policy has to get us out. 

Creating an equitable Richmond means being intentional about promoting policies that combat involuntary displacement, ensuring that Black households truly have a choice in remaining in their communities and that they can reap the benefits of reinvestment as much as their white counterparts. This includes policies that promote stability for Black homeowners and renters in historically Black neighborhoods. 

Property Tax Relief 

In places like the District of Columbia and Maryland, caps on property taxes for the elderly or low-income residents, called homestead laws, ensure that they can remain in their homes even as property taxes rise due to revitalization. What if these types of laws were expanded to all homeowners, regardless of age? This might be a solution for ensuring that Black homeowners are not priced out of their homes as their communities are revitalized. 

Inclusionary Zoning

Additionally, a shrinking stock of affordable housing throughout the country increases the likelihood of working class families being displaced. In the city of Richmond, a lack of affordable housing in neighborhoods that are rich in resources keeps many families from remaining in those communities. Passing and enforcing inclusionary zoning (IZ) laws that require developers to build a certain percentage of affordable housing in new or renovated buildings or to build more housing for larger families, can help ensure that residents find affordable housing within communities of their choice. Burlington, Vermont was an early adopter of inclusionary zoning in the 1990s. As part of the IZ requirements, at least 15-20 percent of newly built housing has to meet the affordability requirements, and they have to remain affordable for up to 99 years. This policy has allowed the locality to build 270 affordable units, and while it is not a perfect system, enforcing regulations means that people can access affordable housing in changing communities. 

Preservation and Celebration

While Jackson Ward still struggles with the legacy of mass displacement of Black residents, the community does provide an example of how historic preservation policies help to combat cultural displacement in legacy Black communities. For example, in 1976, Jackson Ward was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places; efforts driven by those who recognized the need to protect the community’s history. In 1978, it was recognized as a National Historic Landmark, followed by two local designations in 1986. These designations are significant because they not only provide federal and local protections against significant changes to historic properties, they also symbolize a commitment and recognition from officials that this Black community is worth being preserved. More recently, projects such as The JXN Project  and the Jackson Ward Collective have been created to preserve Black culture by supporting Black business owners and ensuring that they have the resources needed to thrive. These types of projects help prevent cultural and social displacement by ensuring that minority business owners are embedded in the city’s economy. 

Why the moment is now

Black people and neighborhoods have always deserved to be protected from displacement, but the recent health crisis has shown us just how tenuous our circumstances could be without the proper interventions. The COVID-19 crisis hit hard, but Black and Latino communities were hit the hardest. For those who never truly understood the implications of decades of disinvestment and racism in housing within Black communities, the health crisis revealed just how deep these inequities run.  As federal eviction moratoria are lifted and forbearance programs end, state and local policies are even more important to curtailing displacement. 

If racial equity is to be achieved in Black communities that have long been the epicenter for disinvestment, then as reinvestment occurs, Black households must also be able to reap the benefits of this revitalization. And being able to remain there is simply the starting point, for as neighborhoods transform, we should not be left thinking, “there goes the neighborhood.”

Born and raised in Harlem, New York, Mariah Williams is an urban planner, storyteller, adjunct professor, and researcher dedicated to highlighting the experiences of Black people and spaces in cities.  Her work on Black joy, Black women, and community has been featured in Next City, Third Wave Urbanism and For Harriet. Mariah received her B.A in Sociology from the University of Richmond and her Masters of Urban and Regional Planning from Virginia Commonwealth University.

This essay is part of the Richmond Racial Equity Essays series, exploring what racial equity looks like in Richmond, Virginia. It is reprinted here with permission. Check out the full project, the accompanying videos, and the podcast.

VCU ASPiRE: Engaging Beyond Campus

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VCU’s ASPiRE program helps students at Richmond’s largest college discover, engage, and make a difference in the city outside their campus.

VCU ASPiRE is a program at Virginia Commonwealth University that focuses on students learning about the history of Richmond, with the aim of sparking community engagement for areas of the city that are in need. Established in 2012, it has expanded its partnerships from campus-based organizations or organizations near the campus to habitat restoration centers in the northside, landscaping and renovations at the Oak Grove-Bellemeade Elementary School and community center, aided in renovations for historic African American East End cemeteries by finding lost grave markers, and more. 

During the last two years of my college tenure, I was enrolled in VCU ASPiRE’s community engagement program, and when I graduated last May, I received not only a bachelor’s in Health, Physical Education, and Exercise Science but also a certificate in community engagement through the VCU ASPiRE program. A native of Richmond, Southside born and raised — Jefferson Davis Highway and Terminal Avenue, to be specific — I grew up in the former murder capital all my life, and I have seen the city change. To quote Noah-O from his first visit on Sway in The Morning, “I’m from the RIC before it became RVA.”

I joined VCU ASPiRE because I wanted to bring my own perspective to it from a true local standpoint, having grown up in poverty, in the middle of food deserts and gang influences, living in a part of Richmond that was once highly known for sex and drug trafficking. It was an indirect challenge from an old teacher inspired me to become a part of the program. Mr. Stevens, my old math teacher from Thomas Jefferson High School, said to me months before my high school graduation, “Get out of Richmond — there’s nothing for you here.” Years later, I found a way to challenge what he had told me through working with VCU ASPiRE.

Thanks to the program, I learned more about the story of the African American neighborhood of Navy Hill, how it was torn down to build I-95, and how Jeff Davis (aka Route 1) was I-95 before I-95. I expanded my knowledge about the origins of Oregon Hill, learning that it was a blue-collar neighborhood in the 1900s. I even heard the story of the Richmond Vampire, who ran all the way from Church Hill to the Richmond Cemetery [more on the truth behind this legend coming soon from RVA Mag -ed].

By becoming a part of the program, my love for helping the community that I once starved in truly grew. I went back and volunteered at homeless shelters in Southside, and helped renovate the same community center where I used to work out, which influenced my eventual degree. The program also aided in connecting me to resources in the city that I can refer other people and organizations to.

In my second year at VCU ASPiRE, when I was able to do independent events for my required hours, I used my contributions to Richmond’s hip hop culture, such as organizing events and speaking at WRIR for Lovelace Magazine and HennyNCoke, along with lecturing at VCU, the University of Richmond, and Virginia State University in the same semester. The program even allowed me to get volunteer hours when I organized a community hooping session at the basketball courts in Randolph, where friends from ATL and artists like Mally Goku and Van Silke helped bring people out and donated food and drinks.

Through the program, I was also able to create volunteering opportunities at the Richmond City Health District when I was an intern in the opioid department, during my very last semester of college. In February 2019, I represented the program alongside other classmates at the National Impact Conference at UVA. For a former grade school dropout who once lied about going to college, I never could have imagined myself representing a university in a national conference coming straight out of Richmond. But VCU ASPiRE brought me there.

VCU ASPiRE helps inform students about the city, showing them how to find hidden gems well beyond the campus and the popular downtown and Carytown scenes usually affiliated with the RVA tourist brand. I’m grateful for the opportunities it brought to me and brings to many VCU students, and very appreciative of the program’s staff, including Erin Brown, Michael Rackett, Nanette Bailey, former staff member Samuel Brown, Nerice Lochansky, and everyone else invloved.

If you’re a VCU student and the opportunity to engage with your city beyond the campus sounds appealing, look into the VCU ASPiRE program at community.vcu.edu/aspire.

GRTC Connects: Route 12 – Church Hill to the East End

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The fifth installment in a monthly series in which a hometown Richmonder who has spent over a decade abroad explores the many different neighborhoods accessible by GRTC bus lines, to discover the ways transit connects us all.

Church Hill:

Strolling down the tree-lined avenues of historic homes, manicured mini-lawns, and tastefully curated porches of Church Hill, one could be forgiven for thinking they were out on a jaunt in Georgetown or Old Town Alexandria. Alas, a glance down 29th street toward the James River provides a reminder that this is still Richmond; the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument towers here over Libby Hill Park, one of the neighborhood’s grandest green spaces.

Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument (Photo by Wyatt Gordon)

Upon this hill 282 years ago, William Byrd II — a notoriously cruel slaveowner — observed that this bend of the James reminded him of a view from his childhood, that of the Thames from Richmond Hill on the outskirts of London. The name of the neighborhood also derives from a nearby landmark: Saint John’s Episcopal Church. Within its four walls, Patrick Henry persuaded the First Virginia Convention to send its troops to fight the British with a cry of “Give me liberty or give me death!” If Church Hill is a neighborhood with a long memory, then its collective consciousness likely has whiplash from the rapid change that has swept across this part of the city over the past decade and a half.

This past March, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition released a study on gentrification and cultural displacement. In the report’s Richmond section, local urban planner Shekinah Mitchell documents the “racialized wave crashing onto the shores of neighborhoods” in the city’s East End like Church Hill.

In 2016, the number of black and white people in Richmond was roughly equal — clocking in at 47 and 46 percent, respectively, of the city’s population. This equalization marked a drastic shift from the demographics at the turn of the millennium, when blacks made up 57 percent of the River City and whites just 38 percent.

Image via The Valentine Archives

Beyond the identity crisis faced by similar cities once characterized by their large black populations, such as Washington, D.C. — dubbed “the Chocolate City” for this very reason — Richmond’s shrinking black communities are the canaries in the coal mine of widespread physical, economic, and cultural displacement. The southern chunk of Church Hill up to Broad Street has long featured mostly white residents; however, the area’s stock of charming, relatively affordable homes and increasingly expensive amenities like Alewife, WPA Bakery, and Dutch & Co. have drawn in ever-greater numbers of homebuyers with purchasing power beyond that of longtime residents.

Image via The Valentine Archives

Such rapid gentrification means the majority of homebuyers in black neighborhoods today are white people. The New York Times recently created an interactive map to document this phenomenon down to the census tract level. In the area increasingly marketed as Church Hill North, whites made up just one in four residents in 2012; yet over the period from 2000-2017, comprised 61 percent of those who received home loans. In Chimborazo and Oakwood, the numbers are more alarming still: blacks made up 83 percent of residents, but whites received 68 percent of mortgages. 

New neighbors and amenities is a decidedly positive development for Church Hill. Gentrification need not be a dirty word: the problem with incoming residents is that all too often, the hunt for a place to live is a zero-sum game, resulting in a wave of displacement rather than a tide that lifts all boats. Historic district regulations and zoning laws frequently block the creation of more affordable multi-family housing, like the three-to-four story apartment buildings that make the Museum District so charming.

In this willfully sleepy neighborhood where bars close early and the sidewalks are still historic brick, it can be easy to squint and envision Richmond as it was centuries ago. The boxy, modernist homes springing up in every vacant lot are a preview of the city’s certain future. Whether neighborhoods like Church Hill — and Richmond at large — will grow denser or less diverse remains an open question.

The Ride:

After gorging myself on both savory and sweet pies from Proper Pie Co., I stood at the corner of 25th and Broad waiting on GRTC’s Route 12 bus. A woman randomly walked up to me and asked if I needed a daily pass for the bus. She had accidentally bought multiple, not realizing that she could not activate the passes another day, but rather they were only good for the day of purchase. Thanks to the kindness of this stranger named Carrie, the ride was off to a good start.

Photo by Wyatt Gordon

Lacking active GPS data, the Transit app and GRTC’s app both showed the same arrival time. Yet no bus came. Instead of waiting thirty minutes for the next bus to possibly not show, my friend Amber and I decided to walk the ten blocks to the new Market at 25th. After exploring this corner of the East End, we walked to the stop at 22nd and Fairmount Avenue to see what the experience of a shopper headed back to public housing’s Mosby, Whitcomb, Fairfield, and Creighton Courts would be like.

Transit app had live tracking for two westbound buses. Buses on Route 12 are supposed to come every thirty minutes, but due to bunching, this day a westbound passenger would have to wait either 12 or 48 minutes between buses. There was no live data for eastbound buses at all. The first bus we wanted to take never appeared. As we waited thirty minutes for the next scheduled eastbound 12 bus, two westbound buses drove past. 

After a half an hour sitting on the curb (this stop has no bench, shelter, or even a sidewalk), the next scheduled bus also failed to arrive. Frustrated, I tweeted at GRTC asking if something was wrong with the eastbound route.  Their prompt response informed me that only two buses were running that day, and they had no information of any disturbances along the route.

During this final half hour waiting on the next scheduled bus, I witnessed both buses disappear from the Transit app’s tracking at Route 12’s westbound terminus and reappear in Shockoe Bottom, again heading westbound.  After both buses passed our stop heading west a second time, Amber and I became too exasperated by the lack of a bus or answers, and gave up on the 12 — we took the Route 7 bus back to Church Hill. 

For someone riding the bus simply to write an article, the failure of four buses to show presents an inexplicable inconvenience. For someone trying to get home after shopping with their family, this would be a disaster. Imagine sitting on the curb for hours with two kids in 98 degree heat, as all your refrigerated goods perished, and your bus home failed to come again and again.

The East End:

Wine tastings of bubbly rosés, fresh caught scallops, and shelves overflowing with rapini, Hokkaido pumpkins, and bok choy could not have been found in the East End just a year ago. For shoppers at the newly opened Market at 25th, such luxuries are becoming commonplace.

PHOTO: The Market at 25th

As we wandered through aisles named after East End churches, teeming with tons of products sourced from the greater Richmond region, the Market’s desire to make itself approachable to existing residents was almost palpable. The dozens of families packing their carts full on a Friday afternoon seemed to indicate all is going according to plan: for the first time in years, East End residents have access to healthy, affordable groceries at a full-service supermarket. Our conversational cashier concurred; after some initial growing pains and price adjustments, business has been booming.

A block down the road lies Bon Secours’ Sarah Garland Jones Center — another relatively recent neighborhood addition, which painstakingly pays homage to the first black woman who passed the Virginia Medical Board’s exam to become a doctor. Through a partnership with the Robins Foundation, the center is home to the Front Porch Cafe, a coffee house that equips East End youth with life skills and work experience while providing the community an inviting local place to gather.

Go a few blocks in any direction from these top-notch amenities and their placement in the East End begins to feel like an anomaly. Most other streets in this area feature at least one staple of what sociologists refer to as “urban decay”: abandoned homes, boarded-up storefronts, general blight. The poverty and neglect found here can feel so tragic and unavoidable to the untrained observer, but the East End was designed to fail.

It is no coincidence that four of Richmond’s six large public housing communities all lie within one mile of each other in the East End. Altogether, over 9,100 people call Richmond Redevelopment & Housing Authority’s Mosby, Fairfield, Whitcomb, and Creighton Courts home. Over half of the residents are children seventeen and younger; the rest are mothers, grandmothers, and mostly female guardians living below the poverty line.

Photo via The Valentine Archives

South of Baltimore, RRHA’s four East End properties comprise the largest cluster of public housing in the country, and thus one of the densest concentrations of poverty in the whole nation, according to the agency’s outgoing head. What began as a New Deal-era ideal to replace slums with quality workforce housing rapidly transformed into a racialized weapon, to warehouse society’s least desirable people — blue collar blacks — in blocks of homes far away from wealthier whites. The six public housing complexes built for black people were never meant to replace the 4,700 housing units the city gutted from historically-black neighborhoods like Jackson Ward and Fulton, not to mention all the homes lost in predominantly black communities to the construction of I-95 and the Downtown Expressway.

In his book, Richmond’s Unhealed History, Rev. Ben Campbell writes, “You cannot separate the history of public housing in Richmond from race. It is the white establishment deciding what they want to do with predominantly black neighborhoods and using language that suggests they are trying to help improve them, while the actual fact is much darker than that. And that set the stage for what we are dealing with now.”

Today, that staggering concentration of poverty means 60 percent of Richmond’s public housing units fall within just one district, and thus have only one advocate for their needs on both a city council and a school board of nine. This intentionally diminished power of low-income voices manifests itself in the way we talk about, maintain, and plan the future of public housing today.

The courts’ maintenance issues and widespread lack of heat in past winters — many units didn’t have a functioning boiler last year — have led new RRHA CEO Damon Duncan to declare that Richmond’s current public housing properties have “exceeded their useful life by a good 15 years.” While current RRHA residents would likely jump at the chance to move into higher-quality housing, Duncan’s plans to demolish Richmond’s courts without guaranteeing current residents affordable units in new constructions has left many in the community worried displacement may soon be on their doorstep.

The boundary between Church Hill and the East End is as vague as it is porous. Although home values in the former may be triple or quadruple those of the latter, both neighborhoods face a similar challenge: how can we as a city welcome new residents without displacing those whose families have lived there for generations? If policymakers can’t solve this problem soon, then in a generation, there may not be much of a difference between Church Hill and the East End anyway.

“Elephant in the Room”: Community Advocates Discuss Race, Gentrification

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One of Shekinah Mitchell’s favorite memories in Richmond is walking out of her favorite corner store 10 years ago and serendipitously meeting the man who would become her husband.

Today, that corner store no longer exists.

Mitchell’s story is part of a larger pattern that policy experts said is becoming increasingly common in Richmond and around the nation: gentrification.

“Gentrification is not just physical displacement; it’s cultural displacement,” Mitchell said during a panel Friday afternoon. “In the same way we have to be vigilant in preserving housing that is affordable for all people in our community, we have to do the same with culture.”

Two seats away from her, Arthur Burton, the executive director of Kinfolk Community Empowerment Center, said gentrification is often discussed in a way to keep white people comfortable.

“We tend not to talk about the elephant in the room, and that’s the elephant of race,” Burton said.

According to an analysis by panel member Jonathan Knopf, with Housing Virginia, about 90 percent of households in the Church Hill area were black in 2000, including renters. By 2015, that number fell to about 70 percent.

While the number of black homeowners in Church Hill decreased by almost 25 percent in that same period, the number of white homeowners increased by nearly 160 percent.

Duron Chavis, the community engagement manager at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, said the trend is not new.

“The narrative of Virginia is one where some were given privilege over land and its use, while others were marginalized from its use,” Chavis said. He said displacement “is engrained in the very fabric of this country.”

When a wealthier person moves into a neighborhood and purchases a home at a higher price than its assessed value, Chavis explained, people already living in that area must now pay higher taxes on their homes.

For some families, Mitchell noted, the increasing home value is a wonderful thing, as having more equity can mean building wealth. But that’s not the case for everyone.

“In some cases, it can go from $200 to, maybe, $1,600 in taxes a year,” Chavis said. “If you as a homeowner become delinquent on your taxes, then you’re at threat of losing your home.”

For renters, as home values in an area increase, so does their monthly rent – until, sometimes, they can no longer afford to live there.

It’s a process that some people link to eviction.  

According to a report published in April, Richmond has one of the highest eviction rates in the nation. Research by VCU’s Center for Urban and Regional Analysis shows that eviction rates are higher in areas with a higher population of black residents. In fact, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney just introduced a pilot program to help combat high eviction rates. In a 2010 report, the Center for Responsible Lending found that black families also disproportionately lose their homes to foreclosures.

“It’s a modern-day land grab,” said Brian Koziol, the director of research and policy at Housing Opportunities Made Equal, a nonprofit advocacy group. “The result is the same: It took wealth and land from brown and black families.”

For Mitchell, a word that comes to mind when discussing gentrification is colonization. She read in a newspaper article years ago that a local housing official saw a need for urban pioneers – people who will move into areas considered distressed and pioneer to live there.

“A pioneer is someone who goes to an undiscovered place where nothing exists. But our communities are places that already have people and culture,” Mitchell said. “That mentality of coming in and not acknowledging what already exists, not acknowledging the culture in a community – it feels like colonization again.”

Words and Photos by Maryum Elnasseh, Capital News Service

Accusations Of Gentrification Surround Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club Renovation

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Deep in the heart of Church Hill, where cobblestone boulevards give way to single-letter street names, the local Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club is in the midst of extensive renovation and expansion, a process that critics say comes at the expense of the area’s black community.

“This is textbook gentrification at it’s best. Anyone that disagrees has a motive that does not consider the impacted community members and legacy of Church Hill and the club,” said Lorraine Wright. Wright used to serve on the advisory board for the club, spearheading youth development workshops and a debate team within the organization, which she says suffered from poor conditions and unusable areas long before 2018. Most recently, the club’s services have moved into a single open space at the Franklin Military Academy while the club’s facility undergoes a year-long, $6.1 million renovation that will herald a shift in the club’s focus toward education, health, and fitness.

Wright brought increased attention to the club’s changes in a Facebook video condemning the firing of longtime club employees Dorothy J. Crenshaw and LaWanda Rowe, formerly the club’s program director (26 years) and administrative assistant to the director (38 years) respectively. The firing occurred with no notification given to the advisory board, and led to two separate work complaints being filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, with help from former Richmond City Council member Sa’ad El-Amin.

Those complaints were eventually denied, however, and Crenshaw and Rowe have both shifted their focus on to other pressing matters in their lives, according to Wright. This marks the latest development in a still-contentious issue, one that Wright sees as a deliberate effort to draw wealthier new residents into the area, at the expense of long-term residents and underrepresented citizens and without the purview or input of the community or those meant to give guidance on the club’s direction.

“I would really propose that this is strategic,” Wright said. “Every single step and everything that’s happened is absolutely intentional. And that’s our concern.”

Despite the club’s name, the Boys and Girls Club of America are involved very little in its operation, leaving the Salvation Army, and local leader Captain Donald Dohmann, to determine its future. For Dohmann, that means leaving any legal challenges to the organization’s lawyers, after what he says have been repeated attempts to reach a compromise with Crenshaw, Rowe and Wright, with no success.

“The only thing I can share with you at this point is that everything has been turned over to our legal department,” Dohmann said. “We feel that we have made good resolve on meeting the individuals and unfortunately, there are some individuals that have not accepted that offer. But we’re moving forward.”

Wright disputes Dohmann’s interpretation of the events leading up to the complaint filings, which she and Rowe have described as being much more dismissive of the former employees’ contributions. They also disagree on a proposed raise of pool fees from $15 annually to $20 monthly, which Wright says was only removed after community pushback, and Dohmann contends was never part of the renovation plans.

Regardless of the complaints’ dismissal, the conflict over the club’s future could have a potentially wider effect on Richmond society, as El-Amin and Wright have discussed introducing ordinances to the City Council that would put “a moratorium on increases in taxes” and restrict how much properties in areas undergoing gentrification can be improved, as a way of mitigating or stopping the impact that rising property values can have on long-time residents with lower incomes.

“We have to be diligent, we have to vigilant and we have to be proactive,” said El-Amin, who recently criticized Venture Richmond’s new ownership of the 2nd Street Festival as part of a conscious effort “to put Jackson Ward on the path of gentrification” in an October opinion piece in the Richmond Free Press. This along with the club’s renovation contributes, in El-Amin’s estimation, to “the complete annihilation of the African-American community as we know it.”

“It already happened in Church Hill,” El-Amin said. “It’s happening in Jackson Ward, it’s happening in Barton Heights, it’s happening everywhere. It is lethal to the black community, and we have to stop it by whatever means are necessary — legislation and whatever else comes up.”

Wright, for her part, expressed her intent to reach out to Councilman Parker Agelasto, formerly of the 5th District, “to discuss his potential support of the ordinance proposals, prior to his term expiration.” She also affirmed her commitment to establishing a community board for the club, made up of and controlled by indigenous or long-term Church Hill area residents. This proposed board would potentially allow Crenshaw and Rowe to continue serving Union Hill’s community, in a space distanced from the organization through which they did that same work for decades.

“For Ms. Rowe and Ms. Crenshaw, they don’t want to go back to the club, they feel so disrespected,” Wright said. “But it’s those kids, and you can even tell every single time I speak to them.”

“They’re talking about the kids. They’re not even talking about themselves, they’re talking about the kids.”

Photo by George Copeland