Virginia Union Past President Allix B. James Still Leads

Seventy years later, Allix B. James can recount in humiliating detail his first 24 hours in Richmond.

Allix Bledsoe James, the 7th university president of Virginia Union University. (Richmond-Times Dispatch)

James came to Virginia Union University as a student in 1942 and went on to be its president. He would become the first African-American to serve as president of the Virginia Board of Education and as chairman of the Richmond Planning Commission.

And along the way, he helped change the very policies that made his introduction to the city one that he still recalls as “a terrible story.”

James had arrived by train with dark, sooty spots on his clothes, having been ushered by the conductor in Washington to the segregated car behind the engine. All the way to Richmond, exhaust from the engine blew on James and the other black passengers.

At Broad Street Station, a dispatcher directed white passengers through the front door and blacks through the side door.

James lined up for a cab to take him to VUU but was told to just be patient as whites went ahead of him. Finally, a black-operated taxi picked him up.

It was about 10:30 at night and he had not eaten since lunch, so the cab driver stopped at a White Tower restaurant at Lombardy and Broad near campus.

“I went to the front door and the person behind the counter told me to go to the side window,” he recalls. “Well, I refused that, so I went to the campus hungry.”

The next morning he and other students set off to explore the city — on foot after the conductor on the streetcar tried to steer them to the back seats.

They noticed the whites-only signs in the restaurants as they walked and headed to Woolworth’s when a student from New York suggested they would be served there. Again, they were turned away.

“And that was my first 24 hours in Richmond,” James said.

Read more at The Richmond Times Dispatch