Short answers, pulled from the story.
On the 20th of May 1861, the Confederate States Congress voted to move its national capital from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. Virginia voters ratified the Ordinance of Secession three days later, on the 23rd of May 1861, making the action official.
Maggie L. Walker was an African-American businesswoman and financier who in 1903 chartered St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond and served as its president, becoming the first Black female bank president in the United States. The institution she founded continues to operate today as the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, described as the country's oldest surviving African-American bank.
Richmond was home to the world's first successful electric streetcar system. Frank J. Sprague's Richmond Union Passenger Railway opened its first line in 1888, using an overhead wire and trolley pole to power electric motors. Its success led to electric streetcar lines spreading rapidly to cities across the United States.
Jackson Ward is Richmond's traditional hub of African-American commerce and culture, historically known as the "Wall Street of Black America" and the "Harlem of the South." It was home to Maggie L. Walker's St. Luke Penny Savings Bank and features an exceptional collection of ornate cast-iron architecture never replicated outside the city.
Most statues honoring Confederate leaders on Monument Avenue were removed during or after the George Floyd protests in June 2020. The last Confederate statue, honoring General A. P. Hill, was removed on the 12th of December 2022. The only statue remaining on Monument Avenue is the bronze of Arthur Ashe, which was completed on the 10th of July 1996.
Richmond claims several American firsts: the world's first successful electric streetcar system (1888), the first commercial sale of canned beer in the United States (1935), the first cigarette-rolling machine invented nearby by James Albert Bonsack between 1880 and 1881, and the Virginia State Capitol of 1788, the first U.S. government building constructed in the neoclassical style.