A view of the Robert E. Lee statue along Monument Avenue.  Image by the author.

The anti-racist uprisings following George Floyd’s death at the hands of police have defined our current moment and indelibly reshaped America’s cultural landscape. Some protesters, however, have been acutely focused on using this time to reshape physical space.

A transformation of Richmond’s iconic Monument Avenue has been underway for months, providing for many a clear example of how people-powered placemaking could change our cities for the better.

Monument Avenue has long set the tone for the rest of Richmond. One afternoon in May as 150,000 people congregated around the statue of Robert E. Lee, they hoped their gathering would mark the end of darker days and usher in a new era for the former capital of the Confederacy.

Exactly 130 years later, those same folks who turned out in record numbers to celebrate the statue’s unveiling — a ploy to sell houses as much as to cement the Lost Cause narrative — today would be mortified to find the kaleidoscopic crowd of protesters on the same plot of land calling for an end to White supremacy.

Although it may have taken well over a century for Old Virginny to become the imperfect, yet improving state Virginia is today, the transformation of the traffic circle at the heart of both Monument Avenue and America’s grim history of race politics has taken place in just a matter of months.

Welcome to Beautiful Marcus-David Peters Circle

In the first weeks of the civilian uprising someone scrawled the words “Welcome to Beautiful Marcus-David Peters Circle” on a piece of paper and left it at the base of the imposing sixty foot tall statue of Robert E. Lee which dominates the intersection of Monument Avenue and Allen Street. When a local sign-maker saw the message honoring the Black Richmond teacher who was shot and killed by police, he sprung into action. “I know how to make signs that look aesthetically pleasing and professional, so I wanted to put up something that would make people feel like this was their space,” The sign maker said.

He and the other people in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of possible legal action and retribution.

The family of Marcus-David Peters pose in front of a sign in his honor.

After the first wooden sign was taken, the sign-maker immediately placed a lumber order and within a matter of days returned with an even larger marker for the space. Over the months since, the sign has become a focal point, and turned a previously unnamed and unwelcoming traffic circle into a gathering place for those hoping for change.

“It’s been incredible to see it not only accepted by the community, but now surrounded with flowers,” said the sign-maker. “Seeing the sheer number of people who now only refer to that space as MDP Circle makes me incredibly proud. I don’t know who made that first tiny paper sign, and no one knows we made the current sign, but none of that matters. What’s important is that people finally feel safe there and that the space now belongs to the community.”

While it was inevitable that such efforts to reclaim safe spaces for people of all races would meet opposition, few guessed the impending attack on the sign would be so sudden or violent. Recently the sign was cut and removed again during a torrential downpour that cleared the protesters who normally watch over the space 24/7.

The sign-maker knew it was a matter of “when” not “if” something would happen to their creation: “It doesn’t matter when the sign eventually gets torn down. There’s now an entire generation of people that will forever refer to that space as MDP Circle, and no matter what the city does at the end of the day that is our space and we’ll be telling our grandkids what was there.”

A pop up library on site by Little Radical Library used with permission.

Long live the Little Radical Library!

A similar can-do energy took hold when an offhand comment in a group chat among organizers metamorphosed into the Little Radical Library—a traveling collection of books, zines, flyers, and even seeds. Within 24 hours the remark about Richmonders’ lack of access to radical educational materials had taken physical form at MDP Circle thanks to a carpenter friend and a trove of donations from activists as well as local independent bookstores like Chop Suey and Small Friend Records & Books.

After police destroyed the first iteration of the library in a raid of the circle, the next day those behind the effort found a pile of books with a note on it that read: “Long live the Little Radical Library!” Inspired, the organizers resurrected the library with a new motto (“Another world is possible!”) and a new collection of books which center the liberation of Black, Brown, indigenous, queer, and working class peoples.

“The popularity of this library shows there has always been a need for radical education in Richmond,” said one of the organizers. “I don’t see the Little Radical Library as my own, I just feel like a caretaker. It belongs to Richmond. This is why we’ve started moving it around so that people all across the city have access to these books. Many communities in Richmond are untouched by organizing, and we want to help them challenge the structures that leave them struggling.”

History is illuminated

Following the murder of Heather Heyer by a neoconfederate at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville three years ago, Mayor Levar Stoney promised a new approach towards Richmond’s own Lost Cause monuments. After a year of deliberations, his commission recommended Robert E. Lee be recontextualized and the remaining four statues be removed.

Disappointed by the complete inaction of city leaders in the two years since, a collective of historians, local artisans, and concerned citizens came together under the name History is Illuminating to seize this current moment. Their aim? “To address the issues the city would not: historically entrenched racism, the Lost Cause Narrative, and the legacy of Jim Crow that still looms over the city and its citizenry, and the lack of an accessible means by which residents can engage in their own city’s history—the good, the bad, the ugly.”

By installing new historic markers, the collective hopes to provide an honest and accurate history of the Confederate monuments without bias or sugarcoating. Their efforts to independently recontextualize Monument Avenue have been largely welcomed by the public — with the notable exception of the Richmond Police Department who has removed their signs multiple times.

“We felt compelled to share the often untold stories of the Black historical figures whose talent, sacrifice, and determination built the foundations of Richmond’s beautifully unique culture and community,” said one member. “We realize that the aggressive response of some people, including Richmond’s Police Department, means we’re clearly doing something ‘right.’ We fully understand that despite all of the positive engagement we have received and continue to receive, providing access to an honest history of racism, disenfranchisement, abuse, and degradation leveled against Black and Brown people within the city/state we all call home will incur a negative response from people who do not want to acknowledge that.”

While a couple of city council members have been seen at protests and a resolution to rename the Robert E. Lee Bridge recently passed unanimously — albeit with some reluctance, so far no member of city government has taken a stance on such independent efforts to repurpose or recontextualize MDP Circle. History is Illuminating hopes to change that.

“While we are taking donations for the creation of new signs, at this stage what we really need is official approval by the city in order to install our replacement signs on Monument Avenue in a way that keeps our installers safe from arrest or backlash from authority figures,” said a member. “What we would like to do is start galvanizing support from Richmond’s citizens to call Mayor Stoney’s office and respectfully demand support for the installation of these signs. That is our top priority right now.”

Accessible at last

In the 130 years of its existence, the traffic circle around the Robert E. Lee statue was never truly accessible. Beyond the transformation of the residential street into something of a crosstown mini highway, someone in a wheelchair couldn’t have accessed the space even if they were able to dodge all the speeding cars. There were no ramps.

After someone spray painted in the circle’s first ever crosswalks to even access the grassy space at the base of the statue, a group of locals noticed the lack of accessible infrastructure. Over Father’s Day they pulled together some wood and crafted their first ever wheelchair ramp. Just five hours after they set the ramps up, police raided MDP Circle and tossed their ramps in the trash. A week later they deployed a bigger, better ramp and waited to see if people would use it before adding two more around the circle.

A ramp that was built to provide more accessibility to the circle. Image from the ramp builder.

“People had already begun using the first ramp while we were still trying to adjust it,” said one of the ramp builders. “They immediately began thanking us. So many people have reached out to us to say that they hadn’t been to that space because it wasn’t accessible but now they had that chance.” In a city where entire downtown neighborhoods lack sidewalks, even the most minor improvements can feel liberating to people with disabilities.

“Accessibility is one of those things that is always overlooked,” said the ramp builder. “We hope the ramps help highlight how so much of Richmond is inaccessible and get people who don’t regularly think about this stuff to question why so much of the city is inaccessible and what we can do to fix it. Why was it so easy for a group of community members to go out and do this when the city has had the last 80 plus years to do this and nothing was done?”

Power to the people

Marcus-David Peters Circle—with its flower beds, basketball hoops, and memorial placards to dozens of Black victims of police violence—unknowingly emulates the aesthetic of so many Soviet monuments in now liberated European democracies. Lacking access to the money or political power required to assert authority over public space in modern America, Richmond residents have resorted to graffiti and self-made improvements.

Although regular Richmonders have been celebrating the transformation of a space for out of towners to take a photo into a gathering place for the local community to enjoy, authorities have proven less than pleased. But why do the powers at be go out of their way to undermine the activation of an otherwise overlooked space?

“The City’s response is a reflection of the extreme conservatism within city departments,” said the ramp-maker. “Beyond doing what they absolutely have to, the Department of Public Works is so hyper-averse to risk and creating liability for the city that they ultimately limit the creativity of the people who live here and the accessibility of the city.”

Authorities’ response to the protests and ongoing place-making efforts underway at MDP Circle have left many distrustful of the current administration. The organizers behind the Little Rad Library share that sentiment.

“How can they see people hanging out in a park as a threat?,” said one of the organizers. “Why does the government see community building as a threat to their authority? It’s like they want people to be dependent on the state.”

While many have been in support of the placemaking efforts, a handful of residents in the surrounding neighborhood have expressed concerns about the numbers of people in the area, the police presence that often comes with protests, as well as noise complaints.

In a year in which the mayor and all of City Council is up for reelection, some believe Richmonders’ mass mobilization against racism and police brutality have made local leaders anxious. “Reclaiming Richmond, and Monument Avenue in particular, is giving people a voice that the city’s political authorities have to hear and acknowledge whether they want to or not,” said a member of History is Illuminating. “The city can no longer give lip service to the many issues that have plagued our citizenry for years.”

With budget cuts looming due to the pandemic and resulting recession, others are calling for the current administration to change its tone and let Richmonders be an active part of the solution. “If there aren’t more opportunities for residents to put their thumbprint on little infrastructure upgrades like this in their own neighborhoods, then we’re going to fall really far behind as a city because we’re not even going to have the same level of money we had for improvements in recent years which already wasn’t enough,” said the ramp-builder.

“You don’t have to treat citizens like children. You can empower people to shape their own neighborhoods. The community will make the improvements themselves if you’ll just let them.”

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Tagged: public spaces, richmond, virginia

Wyatt Gordon is the senior policy manager for land use and transportation at the Virginia Conservation Network, and an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Urban Planning. He's a born-and-raised Richmonder with a master's in Urban Planning from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and a bachelor's in International Political Economy from American University.