ABOUT THE PROJECT

 

VINEGAR HILL: AN EXPERIMENT IN
DIGITAL HISTORY & CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

The Vinegar Hill Project is built around a question: Can the thoughtful application of new technologies, informed by archival research and sustained civic engagement, reveal new understandings of urban renewal and its longterm impact on the health and welfare of a community?



In the 1960s, Charlottesville's Vinegar Hill neighborhood -- an African American residential-business district born of black enterprise and state-sanctioned segregation -- 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

  1. •the displacement of the African American working and business classes;

  2. •the destructive impact of urban renewal/gentrification on African American community life; and

  3. •the erasure of African American history from Charlottesville's commemorative landscape.


Since 2005, researchers from the Virginia Center for Digital History and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies have been working with local residents, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, the Public Housing Association of Residents, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, 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."

 

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS

  1. -Scot French, Associate Professor of History/Director, Virginia Center for Digital History

  2. -Bill Ferster, Director of VisualEyes, SHANTI (Sciences, Humanities, Arts, Network of Technological Initiatives)


ConTRIBUTING FacULTY

  1. -Daniel Bluestone, Associate Professor, Architecture

  2. -Reginald D. Butler, Associate Professor Emeritus, History

  3. -Gertrude Fraser, Vice Provost for Faculty Recruitment and Retention/Associate Professor, Anthropology

  4. -K. Ian Grandison, University Professor, American Studies

  5. -Patrice Grimes, Assistant Professor, Social Studies Education

  6. -Marlon Ross, Professor, African American and African Studies/English


GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

  1. -Ashleigh Coren, Academic Community Engagement Course Assistant, 2009-2010

  2. -LuAnn Williams, Project Manager, 2006-2009

  3. -Schuyler Esprit, Project Manager, 2003-2006


INTERNS/STAFF

  1. -Jaeunn Cho, 2009

  2. -Alfred DiRosa, 2009

  3. -Trevor Smith, 2007-2008

  4. -Kristina Hamilton, 2008

  5. -Neoma Amadi-Obi, 2008


UNIVERSITY PARTNERS

  1. -The Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies

  2. -Office of University-Community Relations

  3. -University Community Racial Reconciliation Project (UCRRP)


COMMUNITY/CIVIC PARTNERS:

  1. -Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society

  2. -Bridge Progressive Arts Institute

  3. -Charlottesville Area Community Foundation

  4. -Charlottesville Community Design Center

  5. -Charlottesville’s Public Housing Association of Residents

  6. -Charlottesville Redevelopment & Housing Authority

  7. -Jefferson School African American Heritage Center

  8. -Our Legacy

  9. -Quality Community Council






“Vinegar Hill Revisited,” Westhaven Community Day, 2009