The state has approved seven new historical markers, including one about Roanoke businessman Arthur Taubman and one on Danville’s infamous Riot of 1883, which helped usher in the Jim Crow era.
The Department of Historic Resources also approved markers about a church in Grayson County that is said to be one of the oldest Black congregations in Southwest Virginia and a Black health care pioneer from Buckingham County.
The approval of new markers does not guarantee they will go up; each local sponsor is required to raise about $3,000 to cover the cost of the marker.
Here are the markers that have been approved, as described by the Department of Historic Resources:
Danville Riot/Danville Massacre, 1883
The biracial Readjuster Party gained control of the Virginia General Assembly in 1879 and of Danville’s city council in 1882. In October 1883, white citizens distributed the Danville Circular, denouncing African American political power. A local Readjuster official publicly condemned the circular on Nov. 2. The next day, an argument between a white man and two Black men escalated into a fight outside the Opera House. White men fired guns, and at least one white and four Black men were killed. Democrats, blaming the violence on African Americans, won control of the General Assembly days later, leading to the demise of the Readjuster Party and an end to Black political power in Virginia until the 1960s.
Sponsor: Danville Research Center for African American History and Culture
Locality: Danville
Proposed location: 322-326 Main St.
Riverhill Baptist Church
Riverhill Baptist Church is among the region’s oldest African American congregations. Emancipated people founded Riverhill between 1868 and 1873, aided by the missionary efforts of local white Baptists who had supported the Union during the Civil War. In 1873 Riverhill became a charter member of the New Covenant Baptist Association, an organization of African American churches in northwestern North Carolina and Southwest Virginia. The church’s first-known sanctuary, built around 1879, was replaced in 1949. A school and a branch of the Independent Order of St. Luke, a fraternal order that promoted Black economic independence, opened near Riverhill, creating a hub for the Black community.
Sponsor: Riverhill Baptist Church
Locality: Grayson County
Proposed location: Intersection of U.S. 58/U.S. 221 and Beech Grove Lane (Virginia 623)
Arthur Taubman
Arthur Taubman, a self-made businessman, was born in Astoria, New York. He moved to Roanoke in 1932 to acquire three Advance Stores. When he retired as president of Advance in 1969, the company had grown to 54 stores. Later known as Advance Auto Parts, the chain expanded nationwide. Taubman was cofounder and chairman of Alliance Tire and Rubber Co., which opened in Israel in 1952 and became that country’s largest exporter. During the World War II era, he signed hundreds of affidavits of support for European Jews to enter the U.S., claiming each as his cousin. A civic leader in Roanoke, he worked for the desegregation of public facilities in the 1960s.
Sponsor: Nelson Harris
Locality: Roanoke
Proposed location: 200 block of McClanahan Avenue
Colored Rosemont
The house at 1312 Wythe St. is the only original dwelling from the once-thriving, predominantly African American neighborhood known as Colored Rosemont. Virginia F.W. Thomas, a white real estate entrepreneur, inherited and purchased land in the area early in the 20th century. She sold home lots without restrictive racial covenants, despite their common use then. By about 1950, many Black middle-class families lived between Madison, Pendleton, North Fayette and North West streets. In the 1960s, the city of Alexandria expropriated property in Colored Rosemont, compensated the owners and constructed a public housing project, undeterred by a lawsuit and vigorous opposition from the neighborhood.
Sponsor: Office of Historic Alexandria
Locality: Alexandria
Proposed location: 1312 Wythe St.
Korean Americans in Northern Virginia
The small community of Koreans in and around Washington, D.C., began to grow after the embassy of the Republic of Korea opened in 1949 and the Korean War commenced in 1950. About 500 Koreans, primarily university students, lived in the region by the early 1960s. A wave of new arrivals followed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed restrictions based on ethnicity. Many Korean Americans moved to the Virginia suburbs, and Annandale attracted entrepreneurs in the 1980s with its affordable real estate and access to highways. Featuring stores, restaurants, professional services, churches and civic groups, Annandale became a social and commercial hub for the community.
Sponsor: Annandale Rotary Club
Locality: Fairfax County
Proposed location: Little River Turnpike (Virginia 236) at intersection with Ravensworth Road
Beulah Marshall Munford Wiley
Beulah M. Wiley, a 1941 Cumberland Training School graduate, was a Black health care pioneer. She led an intensive campaign to establish the Central Virginia Community Health Center, which opened in 1970. This was the state’s first community health facility funded by the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, created in 1964 as part of the war on poverty. The drive for community health care emerged from the Civil Rights Movement. The CVCHC was a product of Wiley’s activism and brought high-quality care to underserved families in Buckingham, Cumberland and Fluvanna counties. It later expanded into a broad network of facilities serving tens of thousands of patients annually.
Sponsor: Harry Marshall
Locality: Buckingham County
Proposed location: 25892 N. James Madison Highway
Mahone’s Tavern
Mahone’s Tavern, built circa 1796 across from the Southampton County courthouse, was a center of political and social activity for more than a century. Known as Kello’s Tavern early in the 1800s, it served as a refuge for citizens and as an encampment for soldiers at the time of Nat Turner’s insurrection in 1831. Fielding Mahone operated the tavern from 1841 to 1855. His son, William Mahone, a railroad magnate, Confederate major general, leader of the biracial Readjuster Party and U.S. senator, lived here as a youth. John Kindred, a five-term congressman from New York, lived here as a child in the 1860s. Also known as Howard’s Hotel, the building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Sponsor: Mahone’s Tavern & Museum Inc.
Locality: Southampton County
Proposed location: 22341 Main St., Courtland