Man-made myths and erasures
The Reynolda community during this time was a metaphorical bubble — separate and idyllic, guided by Katharine Reynolds’ progressive ideals. However, like most “bubbles,” it was fragile. Behind the mysticism of the utopian-like estate is the fact that it was built with money earned off of the backs of enslaved persons — a fact that had long been overlooked according to Archer. The museum’s exhibit, “Still I Rise,” strives to remember and celebrate the Black experience at Reynolda while bringing to light the true roots of the Reynolds family fortune.
“There’s a legend that [R.J. Reynolds] was sort of a self-made man,” Archer says. “That’s not true.”
The legend of R.J. Reynolds goes that, through his own hard work and cleverness, he became one of the leaders of the booming tobacco industry. In reality, his childhood was spent on his family’s thousand-acre Rock Spring Plantation in Virginia. During the Civil War, his father, Hardin Reynolds, owned over 60 slaves. After the war, he transitioned from enslaved labor to Black tenant labor. He paid minimally and enforced harsh contracts.
“He was 15 years old at the time of emancipation,” Archer says. “By the time you’re 15, you’ve absorbed a lot of white supremacy.”
This was in the same decade that the Silas Creek Parkway, originally called the East-West Parkway, was built as part of Interstate 40. The white-majority government designed the parkway, which razed and segregated traditionally Black neighborhoods, including Five Row.
Before the neighborhood’s demolition in the 1960s, many residents chose to purchase their homes and used the materials to construct their new homes elsewhere. Pledger successfully petitioned Charlie Babcock, who had purchased the estate from the Reynolds, to pay for the relocation of their church building. Despite this, the community essentially disappeared with only its unwritten legacy and a few photographs as evidence of its existence.
It was not until Feb. 2022, when the Reynolda House opened an exhibit titled “Still I Rise: The Black Experience at Reynolda,” that an attempt was made to recover this history. Much of the exhibit draws on the Reynolda Oral History Project, which began in 1980, when former residents of Five Row like Miller and Pledger were interviewed about their experiences.
Archivist Bari Helms was the main curator of the exhibit which is located in the East Bedroom Gallery. She collected photographs, oral histories and assorted documentation of Black history at Reynolda. The exhibit, which will remain open until December 2025, also features various works by Black artists on a rotating basis.
“It’s history that can be hidden or protected. And I think that it’s foundational to the city, to the tobacco industry, to the South,” Archer says. “[The exhibit] has inspired us to approach other topics that are challenging.”
