Richmond's lost community: Descendants want you to know about Granite and its 'history of survival'

RICHMOND, Va. -- Forest Hill Avenue in South Richmond is a bustling road with shops, restaurants, homes and what feels like constant construction. But one block over, off Cherokee Road, sits a gravel road that was once the epicenter of a lost community.

Florine Drumgold remembers Granite, a once thriving neighborhood wedged between what is now Bon Air and the James River.

"I lived in Granite," Drumgold said. "Born and raised in Granite. 1935."

Drumgold keeps pictures of the house where she once lived among pictures of her parents and grandparents, who lived there before her.

"Oh it was beautiful. A nice community. It was about 10 or 12 families. It was real nice. Everybody took care of each other," Drumgold said.

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The tight-knit, predominantly Black community where she lived in for about 30 years was one she could count on. She considered it a safe haven for her family during years of segregation and Jim Crow.

Drumgold's early childhood was spent being bused to Chesterfield County, where she, her siblings, and neighbors would wait, sometimes hours, before they were bused to Carver, miles away on the other side of Richmond. White students were picked up and dropped off at their respective schools.

"After we got older, all of us would just look at each other and say, what on Earth? How did we do that? It was tough. We were raised tough," she said.

Toughness is in her roots. It's the reason her family decided to research the Granite community.

"I thought it was something small," Emmanuel Hyde III, a family member hired to do his homework on descendants of the Granite community, said. "What I didn't know was, I was about to research over 2,000 people."

Months of research and document recovery led to discovery after discovery.

"They have a great, great history," Hyde said. "It's a history of survival."

Among the artifacts, a list of descendants that dated back to around the Civil War. The list charted who was an enslaved laborer and how much they cost.

"There was a price put to their name," Hyde said. "Meaning that's how much they were worth to their owner. But they were worth so much more."

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The Granite community started when dozens of those laborers, living together on former plantation lands, were eventually able to own their own property.

"Almost never happened," Hyde said. "I never heard anybody every speak on this type of story. This is a powerful story."

A story that revealed itself to be about those who helped build the ultimate symbol of Virginia's power.

Granite was named after the rock early residents, Drumgold's ancestors, mined from nearby quarries.

They used the rock in the renovation and expansion of the Virginia State Capitol.

"Black people. Black people," Hyde said, pointing to the community of families that contributed to Granite's growth. "Mickens. Davis. Carringtons. Black folk. Powerful Black people that didn't get recognition."

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For years, the families who founded the community worked to create their future, building churches, schools and shops on the land they were given for little to no cost. They stayed together until the mid-20^th century.

"Elderly people just died out. And then people got married and left, and the community just went," Drumgold said. "Everything went commercial."

Suburban growth stole most of Granite's separate identity, but not all of it.

"This was our sacred ground," Olufemi Shepsu, a descendant of the Granite Community, said.

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He was raised in one of the last two houses that remains on the family's land.

Now, descendants are searching for more relatives tied to the people who once resided in the community.

"They didn't allow enslavement to stop them. They didn't allow Jim Crow to stop them. And here we are, their legacy, and we're doing the work to carry on the traditions of the Davis, the Royal families, the Mickens, the Greens, the Carringtons, the Rollins families, all those ancestors are smiling now that we're giving them their proper due," Shepsu said.

The Granite CommUNITY Foundation is hosting Granite Festival at Huguenot High School Grounds on September 14, 2024. The foundation hopes to raise awareness about the community and share the story with possible descendants.

"We're raising money for this festival that we're putting together," Burt Minter, one of the community's descendants, said. "We're also raising money to preserve cemeteries in the Forest Hill Avenue area."

Family members said they had no plans to leave the land their ancestors helped build

"We're going to hold onto it," Shepsu said. "We need to."