Danville is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The city is located in the Southside Virginia region and on the fall line of the Dan River. It was a center of tobacco production and was an area of Confederate activity during the American Civil War, due to its strategic location on the Richmond and Danville Railroad. In April 1865 it briefly served as the final capital of the Confederate States before its surrender later that year.
Danville is the principal city of the Danville, Virginia Micropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 census, the population was 42,590. It is bounded by Pittsylvania County, Virginia and Caswell County, North Carolina to the south. It hosts the Danville Otterbots baseball club of the Appalachian League.
Danville had an African American majority during the Reconstruction era and had African American political representatives of the Readjuster Party until after the Danville Massacre and Democrats regaining control locally and statewide. The area again saw violence during the civil rights era.
| Name: | Danville City |
|---|---|
| FIPS code: | 51-590 |
| State: | Virginia |
| Total Area: | 43.70 sq mi (113.19 km²) |
| Land Area: | 42.80 sq mi (110.84 km²) |
| Total Population: | 42,590 |
| Population Density: | 970/sq mi (380/km²) |
Danville City location map. Where is Danville City?
History
18th century
Numerous Native American tribes had lived in this part of the Piedmont region since prehistoric times. During the colonial period, the area was inhabited by Siouan language-speaking tribes.
In 1728, English colonist William Byrd headed an expedition sent to determine the true boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. Late that summer, the party camped upstream from what is now Danville. Byrd was so taken with the beauty of the land, that he prophesied a future settlement in the vicinity, where people would live “with much comfort and gaiety of Heart.” He named the river along which they camped as the “Dan”, for Byrd felt he had wandered “From Dan to Beersheba.”
After the American Revolutionary War, the first settlement developed in 1792 downstream from Byrd’s campsite, at a spot along the river shallow enough to allow fording. It was named “Wynne’s Falls”, after the first settler. The village developed from the meetings of pioneering Revolutionary War veterans, who gathered annually here to fish and talk over old times.
In 1793, the state General Assembly authorized construction of a tobacco warehouse at Wynne’s Falls. This marks the start of the town as “The World’s Best Tobacco Market”, Virginia’s largest market for brightleaf tobacco. The village was renamed “Danville” by an act of November 23, 1793. A charter for the town was drawn up February 17, 1830, but by the time of its issue, the population had exceeded the pre-arranged boundaries. This necessitated a new charter, which was issued in 1833. In that year, James Lanier was elected the first mayor, assisted by a council of “twelve fit and able men”. By the mid-19th century, William T. Sutherlin, a planter and entrepreneur, was the first to apply water power to run a tobacco press. He became a major industrialist in the region.
19th century
Several railroads reached Danville, including the Richmond and Danville Railroad (completed 1856), and the Atlantic and Danville Railway (completed 1890). These enabled the export of Danville’s manufacturing and agricultural products. The major growth in industry came in the late 19th century, after the war. The Southern Railway, successor to the Richmond and Danville, built a grand passenger station in Danville in 1899, which is still in use by Amtrak and is a satellite facility of the Virginia Museum.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Danville had a population of some 5,000 people. During those four years of war, the town was transformed into a strategic center of Confederate activity. Local planter and industrialist William T. Sutherlin was named quartermaster of its depot, the rail center was critical for supplying Confederate forces, and a hospital station was established for Confederate wounded. A network of batteries, breastworks, redoubts and rifle pits defended the town.
A prison camp was set up, with the conversion of six tobacco warehouses, including one owned by Sutherlin, for use as prisons. At one time they held more than 5,000 captured American soldiers. Malnutrition and dysentery, plus a smallpox epidemic in 1864, caused the death of 1,314 of these prisoners. Their remains have been interred in the Danville National Cemetery.
The Richmond and Danville Railroad was the main supply route into Petersburg, where Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was holding the defensive line to protect Richmond. The Danville supply train ran until General Stoneman’s Union cavalry troops tore up the tracks. This event was immortalized in the song, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”.
In 1865, Danville hosted the Confederate government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis stayed at the mansion of William T. Sutherlin from April 3 to 10, 1865, and the house became known as the last “Capitol of the Confederacy”. Here he wrote and issued his last Presidential Proclamation. The final Confederate Cabinet meeting was held at the Benedict House (since destroyed) in Danville. Davis and members of his cabinet left the city when they learned of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, making their way south. On the day they left, Governor William Smith arrived from Lynchburg to establish his headquarters here.
In 1882, the biracial Readjuster Party had gained control of the city council, causing resentment and even alarm among some white residents, even though the council was still dominated by white members; the city had a majority African-American population. The Readjuster Party had been in power at the state level since 1879. Violence broke out on November 3, 1883, a few days before the election, when a racially-motivated street fight turned to shooting after a large crowd gathered; five men were killed, four of them black. A local Danville commission found African Americans at fault for the violence on November 3, but a US Senate investigation decided that white residents were to blame. No prosecution resulted from either inquiry.
In the late 19th and continuing into the early 20th centuries, tobacco processing was a major source of wealth for business owners in the city, in addition to the textile mills. Wealthy planters and owners built fine houses, some of which have been preserved.
Given the falls on the river, the area was prime for industrial development based on water power. On July 22, 1882, six of Danville’s residents (Thomas Benton Fitzgerald, Dr. H.W. Cole, Benjamin F. Jefferson and three brothers: Robert A., John H., and James E. Schoolfield) founded the Riverside Cotton Mills, making use of cotton produced throughout the South. Both the Riverside Cotton Mills and Danville itself grew tremendously during Fitzgerald’s leadership of the company as President. In its day it was known nationally as Dan River Inc., the largest single-unit textile mill in the world.
As the industrial town grew rapidly, it attracted many single workers, and associated gambling, drinking, and prostitution establishments. By the early 20th century, the city passed laws against gambling, but it continued in small, private places. On September 9, 1882, Danville Mayor John H. Johnston shot and killed John E. Hatcher, his chief of police. Hatcher had demanded an apology for a statement Johnston had made regarding unaccounted fine money. Johnston was charged with murder, but he was acquitted at trial. The Southern “culture of honor” was still strong and jurors apparently believed the killing was justified.
The Southern Railway constructed a railroad line to the city in the late 19th century and had facilities here, which contributed to the growing economy. In 1899, the company completed a grand passenger station, designed by its noted architect Frank Pierce Milburn. For many years, passenger traffic was strong on the railroad; it also operated freight trains.
20th century
A serious train wreck occurred in Danville on September 27, 1903. “Old 97”, the Southern Railway’s crack express mail train, was running behind schedule. Its engineer “gave her full throttle”, but the speed of the train caused it to jump the tracks while on a high trestle crossing the valley of the Dan River. The engine and five cars plunged into the ravine below, killing nine and injuring seven. The locomotive and its engineer, Joseph A. (“Steve”) Broadey, were memorialized in song. A historic marker at the train crash site is located on U.S. 58 between Locust Lane and North Main Street. A mural of the Wreck of the Old 97 has been painted on a downtown Danville building to commemorate the incident.
Afterward Democrats forced African Americans out of office and suppressed their voting rights. In November 1883 Democrats regained control of the state legislature by a large majority, and pushed out the Readjuster Party.
White Democratic legislators interpreted the Danville events as more reason to push blacks out of politics. In 1902, the state legislature passed a new constitution that raised barriers to voter registration, effectively disenfranchising most blacks and many poor whites, who had been part of the Readjuster Party. They excluded them from the political system, causing them to be underrepresented and their segregated facilities to be underfinanced.
On July 15, 1904, the Danville police successfully broke up a lynching party by firing warning shots above a crowd. About 75 white men had gathered at the jail to take Roy Seals, an African-American man arrested as a suspect in the murder of a white railroad worker. The police saved Seals and the city quickly indicted some of the lynch mob; several men were convicted, fined and served 30 days in jail. The killer was found to have been another white man, who was prosecuted.
On March 2, 1911, Danville Police Chief R. E. Morris, who had been elected to three two-year terms and was running for a fourth term, was arrested as an escaped convicted murderer. He admitted that he was really Edgar Stribling of Harris County, Georgia. He had been on the run for thirteen years.
On October 13, 1917, Walter Clark was lynched. He was an African-American man who had fatally shot a policeman while resisting arrest for the killing of his common-law wife. Clark held off the police for two hours, but a mob gathered and set his house on fire. He was shot multiple times and killed as he left the house. His was the last lynching in Danville.
Heightened activism in the civil rights movement in Virginia occurred in Danville during the summer of 1963. Since the early 20th century, most blacks had been excluded from voting by the state constitution, which had created barriers to voter registration. White Democrats had imposed legal segregation after regaining control of the state legislature following the Reconstruction era, and Jim Crow laws maintained white supremacy. On May 31, representatives of the black community organized as the Danville Christian Progressive Association (DCPA), demanding an end to segregation and job discrimination in the city. They declared a boycott of white merchants who refused to hire blacks and marched to City Hall in protest of conditions.
Most of the marchers were high school students. Police and city workers, armed with clubs, beat the young protesters and sprayed them with fire hoses. Around forty protesters needed medical attention, but the marches and other protests continued for several weeks. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), came to Danville and spoke at High Street Baptist Church about the police brutality. He said it was the worst he had seen in the South. The date of one protest on June 10, 1963, later came to be referred to as “Bloody Monday”.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) sent organizers to Danville to support the local movement. They helped lead protests, including demonstrations at the Howard Johnson Hotel and restaurant on Lee Highway. The hotel was known for discriminating locally against blacks as customers and excluding them as workers. A special grand jury indicted 13 DCPA, SCLC, and SNCC activists for violating the “John Brown” law. This law, passed in 1830 after a slave uprising, made it a serious felony to “…incite the colored population to acts of violence or war against the white population.” It became known as the “John Brown” law in 1860 because it was used to convict and hang abolitionist John Brown after his raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.
By the end of August, more than 600 protesters had been arrested in Danville on charges of inciting to violence, contempt, trespassing, disorderly conduct, assault, parading without a permit, and resisting arrest. Because of the large number of arrests on these charges, often the jails were overcrowded, and protesters were housed in detention facilities in other nearby jurisdictions. The demonstrations failed to achieve desegregation in Danville at that time. Town facilities remained segregated until after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. African-American residents were mostly unable to register and vote until after the federal government enforced their constitutional rights under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Since the late 20th century, the textile industry has moved to offshore, cheaper labor markets. The Dan River mill has closed and many of its buildings have been torn down, with the bricks sold for other uses. “The White Mill” of the Dan Mill complex, considered historically and architecturally significant, is being renovated in the early 21st century as an apartment complex.
In the late 20th century, the restructuring of the tobacco, textile, and railroad industries all had an adverse effect, resulting in the loss of many jobs in Danville. The decline in passenger traffic caused the Danville railroad station to fall into disuse. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, and has been renovated by a combination of public and private funding. Today part of the station devoted to the first satellite facility of the Science Museum of Virginia. Related spaces have been developed for a park with amphitheater, a community meeting and recreation facility, and the Danville Farmer’s Market. The city used ISTEA funds in association with the Virginia Department of Transportation, and partnered also with Amtrak, Pepsi-Cola, and other private sources. The station renovations were completed in 1996. This project spurred investment in other warehouse properties, “which have been redeveloped into offices, commercial spaces, apartments, lofts, and restaurants. The approximately $4 million of federal grant money initiated the redevelopment and leveraged additional funds from public and private sources.”
21st century
The city and region continue to work to develop new bases for the economy. The losses have made it difficult to preserve the city’s many architecturally and historically significant properties dating from its more prosperous years. In 2007 Preservation Virginia President William B. Kerkam, III, and its Executive Director Elizabeth S. Kostelny announced at a press conference held in Danville at Main Street Methodist Church that the entire city of Danville had been named as one of the Most Endangered Historic Sites in Virginia. It is working to preserve and redevelop the River District as a center for the community and to stimulate heritage tourism. In 2020, the city approved a referendum to open a Casino at the site of the old mill, which is slated to open in 2024.
Danville City Road Map
Geography
Danville is located along the southern border of Virginia, 70 miles (110 km) south of Lynchburg and 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Greensboro, North Carolina, via U.S. Route 29. U.S. Route 58 leads east 78 miles (126 km) to South Hill and west 30 miles (48 km) to Martinsville.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 43.9 square miles (113.7 km), of which 43.1 square miles (111.6 km) is land and 1.0 square mile (2.6 km) (2.3%) is water.
Climate
Danville has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa). Winter nights usually average below freezing, with air frosts being abundant during that season. During summer, it is influenced by the strong sun and convective air masses, providing both hot temperatures and frequent thunderstorms.
Danville City Topographic Map
Danville City Satellite Map
Danville City Outline Map
