Richmond slave trail

Richmond Times-Dispatch Archives

Published: September 22, 2008

The City Council established the Richmond Slave Trail Commission in the late 1990s to raise the level of awareness and informational accuracy about Richmond’s role in the slave trade. Although the first slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619, Richmond did not play a major part in the business of enslavement until after the United States banned the importation of Africans from oversees in 1808. Businesses emerged to fill the demand for the purchase, sale, and delivery of enslaved African-Americans.

Realizing a general lack of knowledge about the slave trade—once so integral to Richmond—the Slave Trail Commission developed a walking trail that would physically outline the paths countless slaves traveled on their demoralizing journey through forced servitude.

The commission began with a kernel of information and a desire to know more. Research uncovered, for instance, the existence of several dozen slave businesses in Shockoe Bottom along with the long-vanished Burial Ground for Negroes (now an asphalt-covered parking lot), and the site of Lumpkin’s slave jail: the tragic landscape where many enslaved African-Americans were severed from their families.

Among the features of the slave trail: the Manchester docks and Rockett’s Landing, where slaves were transported to and from Richmond; Mayo Island; the canal; an auction house; the Burial Ground for Negroes; the Reconciliation Statue; and the First African Baptist Church.

Another intangible marker is Lumpkin’s Jail. One of the largest and most notorious slave jails in antebellum America, Lumpkin’s Jail was demolished in the 1870s. At the end of the Civil War, Lumpkin’s Jail (known by slaves as “the Devil’s Half-Acre”) was transformed into a school for newly liberated African-Americans—a school that grew into Virginia Union University.
[Credit: Times-Dispatch archives, Richmond Slave Trail Commission]

SLAVE TRAIL TOUR ROUTE

1. Manchester Docks
In the pre-Revolutionary period Manchester was a busy slave market. Around 1776, the market moved to Richmond with the James River serving as a major avenue for transporting enslaved Africans.
• TOUR: Ancarrow’s Landing & Manchester Docks

2. Slave Trade Path
The Slave Trade path along the James River reflects the transition Africans had to make between their homelands and the strange new world. They quickly understood that their chained walk toward an unknown future held no promise and many dangers.

3. Mayo’s Bridge
John Mayo built his first toll bridge here in 1788 to connect Richmond and Manchester, and it has remained a crossing of the river ever since. On the north side of the river was the Shockoe Valley. The financial prominence of this part of the city dates to the 19th century, in which the slave trade and slave-financed industry generated exorbitant amounts of capital to be invested.
• TOUR:  Floodwall Walk

4. Kanawha Canal
The late 18th-century construction era required a large, mostly slave labor force. African-Americans dug the canal. Numerous African-American boatmen traversed the canal, while black Richmonders carted cargo to and from the boats. The canal became another means for shipping slaves. There is a plaza along the Canal Walk honoring Henry “Box” Brown, a slave that escaped Richmond.
• TOUR: Canal Walk

5. Auction Houses
There were several dozen such houses in Shockoe Bottom, typically selling human “goods” along with corn, coffee, and other commodities. Some sales were part of a larger business; other auctioneers dealt exclusively in slaves. Most slave commerce was concentrated in the roughly 30-block area bounded by Broad, 15th, and 19th Streets and the river.

6. Reconciliation Statue
Identical statues in Liverpool, England, Benin, West-Africa; and Richmond, Virginia, memorialize the British, African, and American triangular trade route, now identified as the Reconciliation Triangle.
• TOUR: Reconciliation Statue

7. Lumpkin’s Jail
Enslaved Africans referred to Lumpkin’s Jail as “the Devil’s Half Acre,“ reflecting the despair and anger of people separated forever from their families. In 1867, Mary Lumpkin, a black woman and widow of the jail’s owner, Robert Lumpkin, boosted post-Civil War black education when she rented complex to a Christian school, which evolved into Virginia Union University.

8. Negro Burial Ground
Many of Richmond’s first citizens lie in unmarked graves here. Richmond’s gallows was above on the hillside. Executed here was Gabriel, an articulate, literate 24-year-old blacksmith from Thomas Henry Prosser’s Brookfield Plantation. Gabriel and his colleagues believed that God’s laws entitled them to equal station with men and women of all races. They conspired in 1800 to take over the Virginia government in an extensive campaign, which was betrayed at the last minute. See Henrico’s  Spring Park for more on this historic event.

9. First African Baptist Church
The First African Baptist Church was founded in 1841. The church became a center for Christian worship and an anchor for African-American community development at a time when gatherings outside for church were prohibited.
• TOUR: Court End

Directions
From I-95 take the Franklin Street Exit (74B). Travel south through the first traffic light (road turns into 15th Street) and drive to Main Street. The Reconciliation Statue will be on the right.

SOURCE: Richmond Slave Trail Commission