In the 1910s and 1920s, the city's largest African American neighborhood was Vinegar Hill, where numerous Black-owned and operated businesses thrived. They included restaurants, barber shops, grocery stores, funeral homes, insurance companies, taxi and ambulance services, and a newspaper. The neighborhood also included five African American churches. Yet in the 1960s, in the name of "urban renewal," the city essentially erased this history by bulldozing a church and more than 30 Black-owned businesses and displacing more than 600 Black families.

Vinegar Hill occupied an area bounded by Main Street to the south, Preston Avenue to the north, Fourth Street on the west, and downtown immediately to the east.

That World Is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town, watch:
https://www.fieldstudiofilms.com/that-world-is-gone/

Raised/Razed, visit:
https://vpm.org/articles/31948/disrupting-narratives-of-destruction-filmmakers-show-vinegar-hill-is-more-than-a

History of Vinegar Hill, visit:
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/schwartz/vhill/vhill.history.html