Qualla: Norfolk, Virginia

Norfolk, Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Joseph Jenkins Roberts was born free in Norfolk in 1809, in a city where most people who looked like him were not. He left for Liberia in 1829 on a ship that sailed from Norfolk's port. Eighteen years later he became Liberia's first president. The Norfolk he left behind would burn during the Revolutionary War, recover, build itself into the busiest port on the southern Chesapeake, become the world's largest naval base, and then, in this century, spend a billion dollars trying to keep the Atlantic Ocean from walking up its streets at high tide. The city's history is a series of arrivals and departures: ships, soldiers, refugees, hurricanes. The next chapter is about whether the city itself stays where it is.

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Image: Public domain

Norfolk, Virginia: Half Moone

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit S. Weeks, Public domain. Before Norfolk, there was K'che-sepi-ack, which the Chesepian people called home in the late sixteenth century. According to William Strachey, the Powhatan destroyed their settlements shortly before Jamestown was founded in 1607. The land that became Norfolk was part of Elizabeth...

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Image: S. Weeks | Public domain

Norfolk, Virginia: Burnings and Yellow Fever

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Faithlessthewonderboy, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lord Dunmore, the last Royal Governor of Virginia, made Norfolk the colonial capital in 1775 after fleeing Williamsburg, then partially destroyed it on January 1, 1776 from his ships after losing the Battle of Great Bridge in December 1775. American Patriot forces burned most of ...

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Image: Faithlessthewonderboy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Norfolk, Virginia: Slavery, Freedom, the Pulitzer

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (C.?) McMann (signed lower left), Public domain. Joseph Jenkins Roberts left Norfolk for Liberia in 1829 and became its first president in 1848. He was one of many free Black Norfolk natives who took ship from this port to West Africa under the American Colonization Society; most Black Americans did not want to leave at all, an...

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Image: (C.?) McMann (signed lower left) | Public domain

Norfolk, Virginia: The World's Largest Base

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gosscj at English Wikipedia, Public domain. In 1907 Norfolk hosted the Jamestown Exposition on the Sewell's Point peninsula, with President Theodore Roosevelt and diplomats from twenty-one countries reviewing a massive naval display. Southern Democrats in Congress seized the moment and steered the federal government toward...

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Image: Gosscj at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Norfolk, Virginia: The Water Is Coming

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Norfolk is sinking and the sea is rising, and the two are happening at the same time. The land beneath the city is slowly subsiding from geological causes; the Chesapeake's tidal levels are rising from climate change. A 2012 city study estimated that adapting to a one-foot rise i...

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Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0