Doing the Right / Smart Thing
Members of the Elegba Folklore Society hold hands as they say a prayer at Ancarrow's Landing, on the site of the docks where enslaved Africans disembarked from ships. (File photo, 1998)
In 1961, my seventh grade history book at Albert H. Hill was the official history of Virginia for use in public schools. It had been decreed as such by no less than the General Assembly. Here's part of what it had to say about slavery:
"Life among the Negroes of Virginia in slavery times was generally happy. The Negroes went about in a cheerful manner making a living for themselves and for those whom they worked. They were not so unhappy as some Northerners thought they were, nor were they so happy as some Southerners claimed. The Negroes had their problems and their troubles. But they were not worried by the furious arguments going on between Northerners and Southerners over what should be done with them. In fact, they paid little attention to those arguments."
As seventh-graders tend to believe their history books, if they read them at all, 48 years ago I didn't question that paragraph's veracity or purpose. Since attending public schools in Richmond during what was the Massive Resistance Era, I've learned enough to know that paragraph reads like a cruel joke. Now I can see that twisted history book's role in perpetuating denial of the truth about slavery in Virginia.
To appreciate how much the official record of the Civil War (1861-65) has changed in Richmond, readers should pay a visit to the Virginia Historical Society. Since former President and CEO Charles F. Bryan's arrival in 1989 -- he retired last year and is now President Emeritus -- its recounting of Virginia's story has consistently been based on the unvarnished truth.
An archeological investigation completed a few months ago in a Shockoe Bottom parking lot uncovered artifacts from when Lumpkin's Slave Jail stood on that same spot. Those findings have spurred further interest in the history of the slave market days in that neighborhood.
Earlier this year, Jeffrey Ruggles, Curator for Prints and Photographs at the VHS, was in the news for having found more clues to do with slave jails, where the enslaved were stored until they were purchased. By studying three photographs from the mid-1800s, Ruggles saw what appeared to be other slave jails, not far from the one operated by Robert Lumpkin from 1840 until 1865.
More investigation, including more careful digging, will surely tell us more about the story of Richmond's role in what was a huge enterprise at one time -- the international slave trade.
Although a museum about slavery, in general, might be comfortably situated in almost any Southern city -- even Fredericksburg -- a world-class museum devoted to the slavery business could hardly be located in a better place than Richmond's Shockoe Bottom, with its blessing of old buildings still standing.
When people speak of reparations for the descendants of slaves I understand the sentiment, but the idea of putting a dollar value on such a gesture explodes in my head. Good intentions, or not, it won't work. The only thing we can do now, to do any justice to those who were sold like beasts of burden, is to tell their story as honestly as we can.
We Richmonders need for historians and anthropologists to dig up the truth about the business of selling slaves that went on in Shockoe Bottom. We must get over the threadbare notion that leaving that part of the past buried or glossed over with false history is best.
A state-of-the-art museum on the history of the international slave trade is the perfect project for those who want to put a unique tourist attraction in Shockoe Bottom. That's something that would bring people to Richmond from all over the world.
When you can simultaneously do the right thing and uplift a neighborhood in need of a boost, that's an opportunity that shouldn't be squandered.
F.T. Rea is a freelance artist/writer based in the Fan District. He publishes SLANTblog and the Fan District Hub, an independent community news Web site. Rea's work has been seen under a variety of local mastheads since 1972.
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