The Legacy and Home of Jackson Ward’s First Black Homeowner

By some accounts, more than one in four Black Americans can trace their roots to the rivers of Richmond, Virginia. Yet, the city’s significance as home to Jackson Ward—the nation’s first Black urban district in the United States—is often superseded in historical accounts by Richmond’s role as the capital of the Confederacy.

Based in Virginia, The JXN Project (JXN) is a nonprofit organization focused on recontextualizing the origin story of Jackson Ward. Through research and historic preservation, the organization is working to address the under-discussed representation of the evolution of the Black American experience. 

Through this work, JXN surfaced the remarkable fact that the first home in Jackson Ward known to be purchased by a Black homeowner was, in the course of history, condemned and moved away from Jackson Ward to the Sabot Hill Plantation in nearby Goochland County, Virginia—a plantation that had once belonged to a secretary of war for the Confederacy.

Now, JXN is bringing attention back to the owner of the home—Abraham Peyton Skipwith. Skipwith became the ward’s first known Black homeowner around 1793; JXN remembers him as the “Founding Father of Jackson Ward.” Support from Mellon as a part of Mellon’s Monuments Project will enable the re-creation of the home as a national historic landmark. Not only will the home be reconstructed in its original location—with greater historical, architectural, cultural, and geographic accuracy—but it will also serve as a space for community gathering.

When speaking recently to WVTF about the significance of the project, JXN executive director Dr. Sesha Joi Moon noted that Skipwith was “a Black man who lived an entire life, very intentional, about securing his own autonomy for not only himself but also his heirs.” Enjoli Moon, associate director of The JXN Project and sister of Sesha Joi Moon, added, “to be able to reconstruct his cottage and have a tangible asset to be able to celebrate him, I think that means a whole lot in Richmond, in America, in this moment.” 

In summer 2022, when The JXN Project was in the process of closing on the reconstruction site of the Skipwith House, Mellon President Elizabeth Alexander joined other Mellon staff in visiting Jackson Ward to discuss the project’s importance to the community and beyond.

The JXN Project is supported alongside a broader Mellon focus on Richmond-based projects that aim to explore, preserve, and reimagine the city’s rich historical narratives—which include everything from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars to the slave trade, the establishment of Jim Crow laws, and the proliferation of Confederate iconography.