{"id":1975,"date":"2018-04-24T17:01:36","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T21:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2018-05-03T15:33:36","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T19:33:36","slug":"neverett-eggleston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/2018\/04\/24\/neverett-eggleston\/","title":{"rendered":"Neverett"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Neverett Eggleston III poses at the counter of a new vegan restaurant venture to the sound of renovation in the background. (Photos by Chance Evans)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

by Chance Evans<\/p>\n

When Arthur Wilson told me to go inside the noisy,\u00a0boarded-up business on\u00a0First Street\u00a0and meet his cousin, Neverett, another world opened its doors.<\/p>\n

The scene was one of complete chaos composed by one man sitting at a counter under construction.\u00a0 Neverett Eggleston III\u00a0was like\u00a0the\u00a0conductor\u00a0of an orchestra, directing\u00a0the posse of workers\u00a0building\u00a0the vegan restaurant and connected deli he hopes to open soon.\u00a0 He gave off an aura of strength and wisdom.<\/p>\n

When I asked him about his experience in Jackson Ward, he invited me to sit.\u00a0 While he has never lived here, he has deeply rooted family connections to the community.<\/p>\n

He is a third-generation Eggleston entrepreneur in Jackson Ward.\u00a0 His grandfather, Neverett Eggleston Sr., owned and developed the\u00a0famous\u00a0Eggleston\u2019s Hotel in Jackson Ward, an important cultural landmark that once hosted luminaries such as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Willie Mays.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

From left: Neverett Eggleston Sr., Neverett Eggleston Jr., and Neverett Eggleston III. (Photo by Larry Roach, courtesy Black History Museum & Cultural Center Archives).<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

As a businessman,\u00a0Eggleston\u00a0can\u2019t help but admire the economic growth and money coming into the community.\u00a0That, he said, is “a good thing, a beautiful thing.”<\/p><\/div>\n

But, he went on, “it\u2019s tragic we don\u2019t have a larger part in it.\u00a0At one point, all the businesses\u00a0here\u00a0were African American-owned. Now they\u2019re almost all white.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Diversity is a good thing, he said, but\u00a0\u201cyou want equal distribution of property.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walking down any given street in the business district of Jackson Ward, one can see the many opportunities for business ventures in the empty and boarded-up shop fronts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is money coming into the community,\u201d said Eggleston, \u201cbut it is mostly the white folks who have that money to buy up those buildings and revitalize them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus proceeds\u00a0the gentrification of Jackson Ward.\u00a0\u00a0Once an outcast, the neighborhood\u00a0is\u00a0even embracing\u00a0a new role as a Richmond\u00a0tourist attraction.<\/p>\n

In the meantime,\u00a0Eggleston\u00a0and other African-American entrepreneurs in the community are working to rejuvenate Jackson Ward\u00a0while resisting gentrification, the result of a demographic shift\u00a0that is gradually phasing African Americans out of the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Chance Evans When Arthur Wilson told me to go inside the noisy,\u00a0boarded-up business on\u00a0First Street\u00a0and meet his cousin, Neverett, another world opened its doors. The scene was one of complete chaos composed by one man sitting at a counter under construction.\u00a0 Neverett Eggleston III\u00a0was like\u00a0the\u00a0conductor\u00a0of an orchestra, directing\u00a0the posse of workers\u00a0building\u00a0the vegan restaurant and Read more about Neverett<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4012,"featured_media":1976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[85395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-neighbors"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/files\/2018\/04\/Centerpeice-Image-Neverett-Eggleston-III.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7o53H-vR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4012"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/walkingrichmond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}