Home Front Festival-by-the-bay
puts focus on Richmond

By Tom Butt

Part three of three

As Richmond gears up to officially open Rosie the Riveter WW II/Home Front National Historical Park by celebrating its first Home Front Festival-by-the-bay on Sept. 28 to Sept. 30, it’s a good time to revisit the scope of existing places in Richmond that played critical roles in those years.
    A historical report, Mapping Richmond’s World War II Home Front, was prepared for the National Park Service in 2004 by author Donna Graves. Material here is excerpted from the introduction to that study.
    In addition to the themes discussed previously, which expand the range of information for park planning and interpretation, the study sought to locate sites beyond the waterfront that acknowledge the presence of Richmond’s home front legacy across the city’s many neighborhoods. Thoroughfares that promise to be major paths of travel for future visitors to the park received special emphasis, including Harbour Way, Marina Way, 23rd Street/Marina Bay Parkway, Cutting Boulevard and Macdonald Avenue.
    Several local archives yielded rich material, however, the collections of the Richmond Public Library and the Richmond Museum of History were identified from the outset as key to beginning to piece together the details of life in this city on the home front. I combed through the collections of both institutions over many months and found a wealth of information that has shaped this study.
    Yet, many gaps in the record became apparent. The holdings of both the museum and library tend to favor published accounts of events during the period, and while the newsletters and annual reports of the Chamber of Commerce proved invaluable for their detail about local businesses and their wartime efforts, these are, by their very nature, filtered through the “booster” lens of the organization and the class and ethnic make-up of its members.
    Although some correspondence in organizational files was available and useful, letters, diaries and other personal accounts of the time were rarely found in the Richmond Museum of History or the library. This underscores the value of the oral histories gathered to date and the larger collection of individual narratives For example, African Americanor Latino-owned businesses and civic groups rarely appear in these publications, nor are they adequately represented in the Richmond City Directory. Published reports are also, obviously, tailored and edited accounts that may mask failures, debates or schisms within the community that the authors wish to keep out of the public record.
    Despite these archival biases, which are common to many institutional collections, the archives of the library and museum, and their generous staff, have been invaluable for accomplishing what this study set out to do — to begin to draw the contours of a “portrait” of home front Richmond that might provide the groundwork for interpretive planning. The shading and coloration that others will add to this sketch can only enrich its depiction of Richmond during the WWII years.