Williams: A tale of 2 cities more alike than different (2024)

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — As we headed to my godson’s wedding, I concocted an image of a sleepy, conservative Midwestern town bearing scant resemblance to Richmond. But this city, the second-most populous in Michigan, defied my expectations in ways good and bad.

Landing at Gerald R. Ford International Airport — the nation’s 38th president was raised in Grand Rapids — only reinforced my preconceptions. So did our Uber driver as he explained that Amway — short for “American Way” — was headquartered in suburban Ada.

Who can forget the aggressive sales pitches of yesteryear from Amway salespersons trying to recruit others into the business? But frankly, we were surprised that Amway was still a thing. As it turns out, the company founded by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos has gone global.

Richard DeVos was an ardent opponent of same-sex marriage, a major donor to conservative causes, and the father-in-law of charter school champion Betsy DeVos, the U.S. education secretary under Donald Trump. His family’s name and philanthropy permeate the Grand Rapids landscape, from the DeVos Place convention center to the DeVos Performance Hall to the Amway Grand Plaza Hilton, a luxury lodge that includes an historic 1913 hotel building and adjoining glass tower. As for Van Andel, he and his wife’s monetary gift helped subsidize the city’s 12,000-seat arena that bears their name.

But after unpacking and taking a stroll, I learned that Grand Rapids is more than the sum of its billionaire philanthropists and their right-wing philosophies, for reasons beyond the fact that the city’s leading elected officials are Democrats.

Michigan’s version of River City has more in common with Richmond than I imagined. And I’m not merely talking about both being rated among USA Today’s top 10 beer cities.

Richmond and Grand Rapids sprung along the fall line of rivers, on land once populated by Indigenous people.

The Grand River flows 252 miles inland from its mouth at Lake Michigan. Our James River runs wilder and freer through RVA, with class III and class IV rapids rushing past our downtown. Grand Rapid’s river is tamer, more developed and — paradoxically — without rapids. They were submerged by dam construction long ago.

Richmond has the T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge, a span for pedestrians and cyclists built atop the remains of a former James River dam. Grand Rapids has its iconic Blue Bridge, a refashioned 19th-century railroad bridge.

Our cities are similarly sized. Richmond city’s population is around 230,000; Grand Rapids’ around 197,000. Our metro area has about 200,000 more people. The Michigan city is more diverse than I envisioned: 17% African American and 16% Hispanic.

The streets and sidewalks of downtown Grand Rapids were pristine. (Richmond, take note.) Skateboards and scooters were more prevalent than you’d see in RVA; bicycles, by my observation, not so much. Thousands of people poured out of a Tim McGraw concert at Van Andel Arena, which is connected to several downtown hotels and the DeVos Performance Hall by a skywalk.

People dined at outdoor cafes on the wide sidewalks of Monroe Center Street, which bears the honorary designation of Breonna Taylor Way. Taylor, an emergency medical technician slain at her residence by Louisville, Kentucky, police, was a native of Grand Rapids.

Grand Rapids’ Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park and Henrico County’s Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden are both regarded as among the finest in the nation. But beyond the built and natural landscape, I got the sense that Grand Rapids — not unlike Richmond — is a city trying to figure things out about its history of exclusion.

Perhaps surprisingly, both cities have a 19% poverty rate. And at least one woman, now celebrated, left Virginia for this city only to encounter the sting of discrimination.

Across the street from our hotel was a vivid mural of Ethel B. Coe — educator, musician, singer, thespian, civil rights activist and humanitarian. Coe, a native Virginian born in 1899, was sent by her parents to live with relatives in Grand Rapids, in hopes that she’d receive a better education.

She would become one of the first two Black women to run for office in Grand Rapids. And at age 68 — inspired by the poor treatment of Mexican laborers and their children in Michigan — she became a VISTA volunteer, according to an article by the Greater Grand Rapids Women’s History Council.

“The art of living is working together in harmony, realizing nothing is worthwhile in life unless we learn to understand, love and respect our fellow man,” the mural quotes Coe as saying.

Grand Rapids, like Richmond, appears to have undergone a racial wakening in recent years in its public sphere.

Mirroring Richmond’s transition of the Boulevard to Arthur Ashe Boulevard, Grand Rapids changed the names of two of its streets — Franklin Street and Grandville Avenue — to Martin Luther King Jr. Street and César Chávez Avenue in February 2022.

In 2010, the city erected a statue to Rosa Parks at a public circle designed by Maya Lin, the architect behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The statue, by sculptor Ed Dwight, has Parks standing tall rather than sitting on that infamous Montgomery, Alabama, bus. The artist wanted to project empowerment rather than pity.

Parks, facing hardships and death threats after refusing to comply with Montgomery’s segregation laws, moved briefly to Hampton before settling in Detroit. But a plaque in her circle in Grand Rapids says she was a frequent visitor of that city.

Our cities are contradictory places with conflicting histories, taking steps forward and backward in their pursuit of inclusiveness and justice.

They defy easy stereotypes.