Virtual Vinegar Hill:
Preserving An African American Memoryscape
A Collaborative Research Initiative of
The Carter G. Woodson Institute’s Center for the Study of Local Knowledge and the Virginia Center for Digital HistoryCo-Directed by Reginald D. Butler & Scot A. French
Associate Professors, Corcoran Department of History
In the 1960s, Charlottesville's Vinegar Hill neighborhood -- an African American residential-business district born of late-19th and early-20th century black enterprise -- was declared "blighted" by local authorities and demolished under the federally funded Urban Renewal program.
Civic leaders and project boosters hailed the demolition/redevelopment project, coupled with the opening of modern public housing complexes for those displaced, as a much-needed facelift for the downtown area. Yet, for Charlottesville's African American citizens, many with personal ties to the Vinegar Hill neighborhood, this urban renewal (or, as critics dubbed it, "Negro removal") project left a gaping hole in the landscape and produced a profound sense of loss that lingers to this day. Vinegar Hill, as a site of memory, has come to symbolize
- the displacement of the African American working and business classes;
- the destructive impact of urban renewal/gentrification on African American community life; and
- the erasure of African American history from Charlottesville's commemorative landscape.
Today, researchers from the Carter G. Woodson Institute's Center for the Study of Local Knowledge are working with local residents, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, and the City of Charlottesville to digitize photographs, oral histories, and public records related to Vinegar Hill, with the aim of building an online archive and virtual tour of this urban "memoryscape."
Graduate Project Managers
LuAnn Williams (Anthropology), 2006-07
Schuyler Esprit (English), 2004-06
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Kristina Williams (History/African American Studies), 2007-08
Nneoma Nwamaka Amadi-Obi (History/African American Studies), 2007-08
Trevor Smith (Virginia Center for Digital History), 2007-08
Anique Downes (History/African American Studies), 2006-07
Lauren Hammond (History/African American Studies), 2004-06
Community Partners
Our Legacy
Ann W. Carter, Founding Director
Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society
Douglas Day, Director
Margaret O'Bryant, Librarian
City of Charlottesville
Rochelle Small-Toney, Assistant City Manager