Ann-Frances Lambert: Political Destiny

by Charles McGuigan 03.2021

Ann-Frances Lambert has a rare blood pumping through her veins. It was something she inherited from her father, “Benny” Lambert, who was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in the 1970s. Almost immediately after that election, he and the small Black Legislative Caucus began undoing the grave injustices against Blacks in Virginia that has dominated the Commonwealth’s history from the time the state was just a colony. As Richmond’s Third District Councilor, Ann-Frances Lambert is firmly committed to continuing her father’s legacy for justice in a city that has a long history of embracing white supremacy.

Sometimes a place can tell a story, and not just of where it is on a map, and the streets and buildings that make it up, and the memories of the women and men who called the place home. Certain places tell stories of an unspeakable hatred that will not be washed away. Apostle Town murmurs its tale in its very name, and it will not be silenced, not even sixty-five years after it was hacked away from its sister, severed by a chasm of asphalt and concrete as if the earth itself had been ripped apart. Saint James, Saint John, Saint Peter, Saint Paul—these streets that gave “this” town its name—still cry out with a news that is always new.

Back in the 1950s, a racist General Assembly of Virginia, run by the notorious “Byrd machine”, decided, against the will of the people, to cleave Jackson Ward in half with a canyon along which flowed the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, which would later become Interstate-95. For the residents of that community it was devastating. Jackson Ward—“Black Wall Street”, the “Harlem of the South”—is Richmond’s oldest Black neighborhood. It was not the wholesale bloody massacre of Black Americans that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina; Rosewood, Florida; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and scores of other Black communities throughout the 20th century. But it was undeniably a sort of cultural genocide that left in its wake a once-thriving neighborhood broken in two.  By the time that hideous valley of interstate highway was completed, more than a thousand homes had been razed, more than thirty blocks ended in cul-de-sacs, and a great swath of Jackson Ward had been scooped out of existence by an army of earthmovers.

“They had two referendums on the ballot and the people voted it down,” says Third District Councilor Ann-Frances Lambert. “Harry Byrd, Sr. said let’s override it. Forget what the people say, we’re going to put this highway through the South’s most profound economic Black community.”

We’re sitting on my front porch at a comfortable social distance of fifteen feet. Ann periodically lifts up her dog, cradling him in her lap. His name is Chico, a Maltese/Shih Tzu mix. Ann is energetic and anxious to get on with the business of fixing what’s broken in the River City.

“So you’ve got North Jackson Ward where’s there’s only one entryway and it’s isolated, and then you have the other side of Jackson Ward that’s all historic and they’re putting all this money into it,” Ann continues. “But the North Jackson Ward area is still been neglected after all these years. Harry Byrd, Sr. was one the biggest racists in Virginia history. So not only should we take the Lee monument down, we need to take Harry Byrd’s damned statue down at Capitol Square.”

North Jackson Ward, home of Gilpin Court, holds a special place in the heart of Ann-Frances Lambert, for this is where her father, Benjamin Lambert, a political giant who served in the Virginia General Assembly for more than three decades, always kept his offices.

“I would say, ‘Daddy why is your office down here?’” Ann remembers. “And he would say, ‘Our people are here, and I’m not going anywhere.’ And I always was afraid for him, but then at the end of the day I knew everybody knew my dad. They weren’t going to mess with him; they were going to protect him. He was on First Street right across from Greater Mt. Mariah Baptist Church.”

From the time she was old enough to walk, Ann learned about politics from her father, a statesman who worked both sides of the aisle throughout his political career. ”My dad has groomed me since I was a baby to run for office,” she says.

Ann Lambert is a Northsider from birth, and is passionate about representing the District.

“It’s amazing to be the representative of Northside,” Ann tells me. “I grew up over in Battery Park. We lived on Graham Road, and in 1985 my family moved over to Ginter Park.” She lived with her four brothers and father, Benjamin, who was an optometrist, and mother, Carolyn, who was a nurse.

The family were long-time parishioners at St. Paul Catholic Church on Chamberlayne Avenue, and Ann would attend nearby All Saints Catholic School, which was just blocks away from their home on Noble Avenue. 

But even before that, her schooling began at another Northside institution.  “I started my education at Virginia Union in their nursery school, in the early childhood education program.  I always say that I started off as a Panther.” 

Directly across the street from the Lambert family home on Noble, there lived a man who went down in history as one of America’s greatest freedom fighters—Oliver White Hill, the man who, with Thurgood Marshall and other attorneys, argued one of the most important Supreme Court cases in history, Brown versus Board of Education. Invoking the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment these lawyers successfully proved that Black students’ rights had been violated. This landmark decision paved the way for integration and bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

“We were one of the first black families to move over to the Ginter Park area,” Ann says. “Sometimes if I ever got locked out of the house after school at All Saints, I would go across the street to the Hill’s house and sit and wait until my mom came home.  So Mrs. Hill would give me some cookies and juice; they were just such sweet folks. It wasn’t till I was older that I thought, ‘Oh my God, I live across the street from a Civil Rights icon.’’

There were other Black leaders who lived nearby, including former City Councilor and Virginia Delegate Viola Baskerville, and former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder.  “So we had quite a few historical figures in Ginter Park,” says Ann.

During eighth grade, Ann got her first taste of politics.  “I was a page at the General Assembly,” she says. “That’s when my political career started.” 

After graduating from St. Getrude High School, Ann entered Howard University in Washington, D.C. where she majored in communications with a minor in education. 

When her freshman year came to an end, Ann returned to Richmond for the summer to work as an intern for then-Secretary of Health and Human Resources Kay Coles James. “Kay worked under Governor George Allen,”” Ann says. “So that gave me the Republican experience. I got a lot of experience doing that.” 

Over the subsequent summers while attending Howard, Ann would work as an intern for both the TV show America’s Most Wanted, and C-SPAN. She would also work on Capitol Hill for Congressman Bobby Scott. “The amount of policy and legislative experience I got there was phenomenal,” says Ann.

Her last year in college was particularly difficult. Along with the grueling demands of several classes, there were three family deaths in rapid succession. “That was my hardest year ever,” she says. “And I thought, ‘If I can get through this, Lord, I can do anything.’ So I was burnt out by the time I graduated.”

When she returned to Richmond, she went to work for BLAB-TV. She also worked in the television studios at the General Assembly. “I wanted to get experience in all aspects of television, and that’s what I did,” says Ann. “I did the camera work, I did some audio work. I did a little bit of everything.” She even had the opportunity to film her father when he delivered the State of the Commonwealth address. “The beauty of it all was I was able to work with my father in that capacity,” she says. 

Ann was the first community liaison hired by the city of Richmond, a position she held from 2000 till 2003, before taking a job with the city’s recently created intergovernmental relations program. “It was just Kelly Harris and myself,” she says. “We handled the legislative agenda for the entire city.”

She later returned to DC, worked on the Committee of Education and Labor under President George W. Bush, purchased a house in Forest Heights, Maryland, until the housing market collapsed. “I lost my house up there, and everybody was losing their jobs,” Ann says.

So she decided to become a personal assistant to celebrities. “I feel like I’m a celebrity anyway,” says Ann. “So I got a gig working in New York for a celebrity hairstylist who did the hair of fashion model Naomi Campbell.”

And then she packed her bags and struck out for a career in California. “I got a one way ticket to LA and worked on as a PA (personal assistant) for the talent on a show called My Black Is Beautiful PA, which was a sort of Black version of The View,” Ann explains. “I was working with Tasha Smith, Alesha Renee, Leela James and Kim Coles.” She would later work as PA for Omar Epps and other celebrities.  “I was rubbing shoulders with the best of them and I couldn’t complain,” she says. While in LA she launched a business she still operates today—Dronescapes Films, which specializes in aerial photography and film via drone.

“I was taking photos of the high end homes in the Hollywood Hills and flying all through there with my drones,” she says. “And when the wildfires struck the Malibu area I went up there and took my drones to record the damage.”

After ten years on the West Coast, Ann-Frances Lambert felt the tug of her native Richmond urging her to return home.

Last February, Ann made the decision to run for the Third District seat on City Council. At a funeral the month before, she ran into Congressman Bobby Scott and told him of her plans. 

“Well let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” he told her. “But I’ll tell you one thing, get your signatures on Super Tuesday. That’ll be the best time to get them.”

Ann reflects on what the Congressman had told her. “It’s a good thing I listened to him,” she says. “Because then COVID happened, and other folks running for office started complaining that they couldn’t get the signatures. With COVID happening you really couldn’t get signatures because everybody was afraid of interacting.”

She was able to get her signatures in short order, and then hit the ground running, waging the kind of campaign the shrewdest of politicians use.  Think of President Barack Obama and all of his campaigns.

Shortly after Ann filed she called an old friend who was running for office in Northern Virginia, and asked her advice. 

“Ann,” this friend said. “I always learned it’s about the ground game. It’s all about knocking on those doors. So every day you look at your opponent’s weaknesses and strengths, you go after them that way.”

Ann quickly assembled her ground troops and they moved systematically across the District from one end to the other. 

“We put door hangers on every house in the District and from there I started knocking on doors,” Ann says. “I started getting endorsements, but I just kept knocking.” As a long, tiring day came to a close, Ann would announce to her ground team that she needed to knock on at least five more doors before the sun set. Which she did. 

“When Porchella was here,” says Ann. “I was out there. You saw your soon-to-be councilwoman. People are gonna know who I am, damn it. You’re not gonna say I lost because I wasn’t out there knocking on doors and talking to people on the streets.”

On Election Day, she was at the polling stations in her District for the moment they opened their doors at six in the morning. On more than one occasion that day, voters who would see her arriving at a precinct would say: “I met her; she came to my house.”

“All my effort paid off,” Ann says with an infectious smile.

She remembers lessons learned from her father. “My dad was really integral in working across the aisle, and that’s key,” Ann says. “My dad taught me that early on. You can’t discriminate, you can’t hate everybody because you got to work with folks. Whether they’re Republican or Democrat.  He was able to get money for Richmond in more ways than one.”

Ann remembers all too well the racism that has been prevalent in Richmond for many years. “Richmond’s always been Black or white,” she says. “Growing up here, you would see the divide. Every time Blacks would do something that was fun for them, it would always be shut down. Like Byrd Park used to be a place where folks would go on Sundays and just hang around. That got shut down. There were too many blacks, and the whites over in Byrd Park were too scared.”

Things have changed somewhat.  “When I see white folks walking dogs down Brookland Park Boulevard that’s when you know things have changed, especially in Battery Park,” says Ann. But a lot more things need to change.

Ann’s legislative agenda is progressive. She wants equity for all citizens of the city, affordable housing, and she wants to combat systemic racism on every front. One of the keys to it all is revamping much of what ails the Richmond Public Schools. 

“We have a thirty percent poverty rate in our city, which is a disgrace,” she says. “All of our schools are filled with Black children, but we’re not doing anything about addressing the fact that we’re firing black teachers. These students need someone they can emulate, not some white kids from New York coming down who are being taught a script on how to talk to Black kids. So as I said before, if you don’t understand the history here in Richmond, what the hell are you doing because you’re not helping at all by just separating and neglecting.”

 Among other things, Ann would like to see the entire John Marshall High School campus revamped and repurposed. “We could change the whole complex to where it’s kind of like the Collegiate Schools and the amazing campus they have,” she says.

Ann envisions something comparable to the Bidewell Training Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a success story fifty years old now that offers training at no charge in everything from culinary art to horticulture technology.

“We have a seventy percent graduation rate in Richmond Public Schools,” Ann says. “What about the other thirty percent? And what about those students that aren’t going to college?   What are we doing to prepare them to become better citizens?  We need to build a pipeline to the trades from our Tech Center. Give them a trade while they’re still in high school. Get them hours so that by the time they graduate they’ve got certification to become journeymen. There are projects all over this city where they could get the apprenticeship skills and so forth to really make a difference and better their lives.”

The gnawing reality of homelessness resonates with Ann-Frances. 

“Back in the fifth grade at All Saints, I had a teacher named Miss Ice and she was one of those teachers who always did community service with us,” Ann recalls. “I kind of got my community service bug from her.”

She and her classmates would perform Corporeal Works of Mercy. “We used to go sing to the old folks at the Virginia Home,” say Ann. “We would feed the homeless down at The Daily Planet.”

And then one weekend, Miss Ice made herself homeless just so she could experience it firsthand and pass along her knowledge to her charges. “None of us in that class will ever forget her description of eating a hamburger she pulled out of a dumpster,” Ann says.

She considers that lack of affordable housing in the city and the burgeoning homeless population.

“How do we ensure there is affordable housing?” she asks. “We have to change the policies to reflect that. What about these delinquent properties we have here? Let’s think outside the box and build modular homes to really help those who are on the street.”

And then Ann mentions people who are on “survival mode”, those who might literally freeze to death. “I’m thinking about the Norrell Annex and a lot of these old buildings where nothing is going on, buildings the city owns,” she says. “Even the Arthur Ashe Center, they’ve got showers back there. Why can’t we use that as a facility for people to stay, get a hot meal, take a shower, wash their clothes.”

When Ann speaks of Richmond, particularly the Northside, she fairly waxes rhapsodic. “I know the city, I know these streets,” she says. “I’ve ridden my bike on these streets, I’ve made mud pies on these streets. Northside, all day, every day, even when I was in California, folks would say, ‘Where you from?’ And the answer was always, ‘Richmond, Northside.’”

As the interview winds down, Ann considers why she ran for public office it in the first place. “It gets back to Apostle Town over there in North Jackson Ward,” she says. “That’s one of the main reason I ran. Those Black folks who owned homes had their homes stolen from them by the Byrd machine. This is where Blacks had their own businesses and homes and it was stolen from them. Gilpin Court is eighty years of poor policy. And it has to be changed. So when folks talk about what we’re going to do with the schools, I want to know, what are we going to do with the Black people that were disenfranchised?”

“My dad was a great statesman,” says Ann-Frances Lambert. “I’m his daughter and I’ve got to be the same way, with a little twist. I saw how my dad made a difference in people’s lives and we basically shared him with the city and he’s not here anymore. He’s not here to give me advice. We have a lot of work to do, but it’s going to be a great four years, and I have aspirations. My boyfriend keeps saying, ‘You could be the next president.’ Let’s pump our brakes on that one, but maybe a Congressional seat at some point.”