Image courtesy of Virginia Museum of History & Culture, Richmond
"We the People: The World in Our Commonwealth" is on exhibit until Sept. 7.
To uproot, move far away, re-invent and adapt to a foreign country can be a foreboding experience, yet millions have done it for millennia for many reasons and forged a new home.
Virginia is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial mosaic of people from all over the world. Today, 1.16 million people in the state are foreign-born. About two-thirds of them live in Northern Virginia.
Through objects and narratives of people from 68 different countries, Richmond’s Virginia Museum of History and Culture presents how immigrants have woven the state’s rich cultural tapestry and still do today in “We the People: The World in Our Commonwealth,” staged in recognition of the country’s 250th anniversary.
The result of five years of research, including personal interviews, curators traveled the state, scoured newspapers, letters, photographs, government documents, museums and libraries to tell immigrants’ stories. “At a time when immigration is ever-present in the news, it is my hope that everyone who visits the exhibition will see a little of their own history in the experiences of Virginia immigrants,” commented Julie Kemper, the curator.
The United States is a “nation of immigrants,” President John F. Kennedy reminded Americans, the exhibit notes.
Coming in Ripples and Waves
Photo courtesy of museum
Virginia Museum of History & Culture
Panels explain that the United States has had a steady flow of immigrants, coming in what the exhibition calls “ripples” and “waves.” Millions left Ireland in the mid-19th century when a disease destroyed potato crops. German and Scotch-Irish immigrants moved into Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in the 1700s and 1800s. After the Civil War, American companies recruited immigrant labor. In the early 1900s, immigrants from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe built railroads and worked in the state’s coal mines.
World War II displaced millions of refugees and many fled to North America. Vietnamese refugees left their country in 1975 after the war when communists took over the government. Afghan refugees who helped U.S. forces but feared reprisals by the governing Taliban were evacuated through humanitarian parole in Operation Allies Welcome in 2021.
Changes in federal immigration laws over time have both restricted and encouraged immigrants to resettle here, the exhibition recounts. And the people already in the United States did not always welcome newcomers, as the “Opposition and Resilience” display relates. An 1893 cartoon titled “looking Backward” from Puck magazine spotlights the hypocrisy of some established immigrants who opposed others coming into the country.
Exhibits probe questions like, what is “Americanization”? Can it be defined? Some newcomers changed their names, from Kim to Kimberly, from Tu to Joe, for example. Many melded into American society through churches, schools, YMCAs and other community organizations.
Oral histories by over 100 immigrants at multi-media stations showcase the personal stories of immigrants, like Chris Little who traveled the U.S. from Ireland with one suitcase, $100 and a scholarship.
Objects Tell Stories Too
Immigrants’ stories are amplified by cherished objects:
- Textiles from nine countries, like a blanket from Bolivia brought by Giancarla Rojas, at age 12 in 2007 and wall coverings from India, Korea and China;
- An accordion that Rome Daniel played on the ship from Italy and later in his new hometown, Big Stone Gap;
- Hulda Lange Semler’s friendship album, brought from Prussia in 1865 when she was 16;
- Verna Yuracheck Gomelko’s Czechoslovakian festival dress that she wore in Prince George County in the 1930s;
- The Tiet family’s suitcase, carried in 1977 from Vietnam after the war;
- The 1940s sewing machine used by Samuel Brown from Odessa, Russia, who in 1924 became the first tailor at Thalhimer’s, Richmond’s legendary department store. He retired at age 98.
Valuable Contributions
Immigrants’ contributions enriched the country, like the Irish who whacked, bored and blasted through Afton Mountain to build the Blue Ridge tunnel from 1850 to 1858.
Flory Papo Jagoda, a Bosnian musician, fled Nazi occupation and came as a war bride in 1946, settled in Alexandria with her American soldier husband Harry Jagoda. She preserved and spread Sephardic musical traditions and language and received a National Heritage Fellowship in 2002 from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Photo courtesy of Virginia Museum of History and Culture
The exhibit includes a replica of the main room of Richmond’s Village Restaurant, started by Dikos Starros from Greece in 1956, originally called the Village Restaurant but renamed Stella’s for his wife.
Many resourceful immigrants’ enterprises became community institutions, for example, restaurants specializing in the food of their homeland. The exhibit includes a replica of the main room of Richmond’s Village Restaurant, started by Dikos Starros from Greece in 1956, originally called the Village Restaurant but renamed Stella’s for his wife.
Some immigrants helped other new arrivals, like Dr. Tsehaye Teferra who founded Arlington’s Ethiopian Community Development Council, a resettlement agency in 1983. Richmond is home to the state’s first synagogue, Kahal Kadosh Beth Shalome established in 1789, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the country, founded by mostly Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal. Congregants here also helped refugees resettle.
More modern objects include the pocket U.S. Constitution of Knizr Khan which he held up at the 2018 National Democratic Convention when he gave a poignant tribute to his son, Army Captain Humayun Khan, an American Muslim, who lost his life in Iraq to save his fellow soldiers. Khan’s inspiring speech was an antidote to the anti-Muslim sentiments voiced by some at that time.
In a brightly lit glass case is a glittering bracelet owned by Ghazala Hashmi who came to the U.S. at age four from India and was sworn in as Virginia’s lieutenant governor in January 2026. Hashmi wore this bracelet, a gift from her sister, during her 2020 state Senate swearing-in ceremony. It is inscribed with a verse from the Qur’an that speaks to the transcendent power of God.
Former President Jimmy Carter in 1976 said, “Our country is made up of pluralism or diversity. A lot of different kinds of people, but that is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength.”
An exhibit poster notes that in 1783, George Washington wrote, “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions.” This exhibit proves the points of these two U.S. Presidents who served almost 200 years apart.
“We the People” will be on display until September 7, 2026. A version of the exhibition is traveling throughout Virginia. Visit https://virginiahistory.org/we-people-traveling-exhibition.
