The Black men who drove horse-drawn carriages through the streets of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia were both everywhere and invisible during the Jim Crow era.
Their wooden coaches helped conjure up the late 18th Century for visitors including Queen Elizabeth, Sir Winston Churchill and then-Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. And yet the men were forced to use separate bathrooms and water fountains, among the many other sanctioned indignities of segregation.
Colonial Williamsburg tells the story of Virginia’s late 1700s capital and includes more than 400 restored or reconstructed buildings. The museum was founded in 1926. More than half of the people who lived in the colonial capital were Black, and many were enslaved. She said the segregation-era coachmen essentially were interpreters — even ambassadors — for passengers and dignitaries.
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