Forgetting the Freed: The Buried Histories of Chimborazo Park, Richmond, Virginia, 1861-1961

Laura Brannan

Advisor: Alison Landsberg, PhD, Department of History and Art History

Committee Members: Yevette Richards Jordan, Michael O’Malley, Cynthia Kierner

Horizon Hall, #3225
April 16, 2025, 02:00 PM to 04:00 PM

Abstract:

This dissertation explores the dynamic nature of racial oppression and resistance, and the struggles over land use and of memory politics, through analyzing the largely unknown, layered histories of a significant historic site called Chimborazo Hill, in Richmond, Virginia from 1861-1961. The Chimborazo site once hosted a Confederate hospital during the Civil War (1861-1865); a post-war neighborhood for African Americans, which included a school managed by the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned lands, and a church called Fourth Baptist (1865-1877); a municipal park, established by White residents to displace the African American community (est. 1880); and the Confederate Medical Museum managed by the National Park Service’s Richmond National Battlefield Park (RNBP) (est. 1959). Today, the Confederate Medical Museum remains on-site and is co-located with the municipal park.

Most public interpretation and historical scholarship of Chimborazo Hill has focused on the brief four-year period when the hill hosted the war-time hospital. Although the hospital was the first and most commemorated institution on the site, this dissertation expands the chronological and thematic scope of Chimborazo Hill’s historical record by uncovering other significant institutions related to the site, such as the Freedmen’s Bureau school, African American neighborhood, Fourth Baptist Church, park, and museum. The project recovers these previously “buried” institutions, which fundamentally changes how we understand the site’s history and the racial politics that undergird it. Each chapter focuses on the creation of each institution and the ensuing debates, struggles, and meanings people derived from their establishments. The project combines archival research from government manuscript records, newspaper articles, city council records, memoirs, census data, and photographs, with digital humanities methods of layering historical maps and community-engaged research, including conducting oral histories interviews with long time members of the African American community and Fourth Baptist Church. The dissertation argues that despite collective attempts to “forget” Black histories on Chimborazo’s site—through the establishment of the local park and the national museum—Black “placemaking”, community formation, and cultural preservation on and near Chimborazo were effective strategies for protesting and resisting various forms of racial oppression. Overall, this dynamic on the ground at Chimborazo has ramifications for our understandings of how racial politics underlie modern American Southern cultural institutions over time.