James H. Blackwell

James H. Blackwell, a principal of the first African American school in the city of Manchester (later annexed by Richmond), is the subject of this photographic portrait published in Arthur Bunyan Caldwell's History of the American Negro and His Institutions (1917). In 1952 the Richmond School Board renamed a combined elementary and junior high school in south Richmond the James H. Blackwell School, in honor of the influential educator. (It is currently an elementary school.) The neighborhood surrounding the school is called Blackwell. 

Citation: History of the American Negro and His Institutions. E185.96 .C14 1917. Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.