Slave Trail
The Richmond Slave Trail is a scenic tour of man’s inhumanity to man. By that I mean, if you start at Ancarrow’s Landing* at Stop No. 1, you’ll experience splendid panoramas of the James River and the city. But behind this view, like stage scrims, is the tragic story of the booming slave business here that in 1857 grossed some $3.5 million, about $89 million today.
The path follows along the river because at the vanished Manchester docks and along its south bank wharves, slaves were brought in by boat, marched in chains to their holding cells in Shockoe Bottom and prepared for sale.
The Slave Trail’s frequent markers present photographs and illustrations that display ghost-like faces and figures: blacks fleeing the city with their possessions in canal boats after Richmond fell; others – likely slaves a few days prior – peer from a bridge railing out of the past straight into you. Displayed, too, are advertisements and drawings of slave treatment, auctions and the accounts of how people were inspected like draft animals prior to sale.
The well-marked path, which wends from the river to the top of downtown, features 17 narrative plaques that speak to the unfathomable suffering and efforts of rebellion, and includes a statue for Reconciliation that acknowledges the slaving triangle between Benin, West Africa; Liverpool, England; and Richmond.
The path passes the site of the gallows where the life of slave organizer Gabriel ended. Gabriel planned a revolt on Aug. 30, 1800, but a Gaston-like weather event washed away the plan and nervous participants confessed the rebellion to their masters. Trials ended in the hanging of 27 alleged conspirators including Gabriel and his brother Solomon.
One passes under a great stone arch beneath the highway to enter the Negro Burial Ground, which dates from 1750 to 1816. I arrived at the wide, grassy expanse in the late afternoon. Until a few years ago, a blacktop parking lot covered this place. Fading flowers, votive candles and stones of remembrance had been placed at the narrative signs here. Weathered to near-illegibility, a furled banner in the nearby grass proclaimed 2015’s 150th anniversary of the end of slavery and liberation. I found some rocks to anchor the banner flat in the grass and that seemed a little thing to do. A bleak heaviness sits on this field even in the light.
I proceeded up to First African Baptist Church. The present building is from 1876. The site is one of fundamental importance for black Richmond, as a mother church, and congregation members who included businesswoman and activist Maggie Walker. But the public isn’t free to enter; the building houses offices for Virginia Commonwealth Health Systems.
From this place I turned to and see the hill I climbed from the river. The distance serves as a metaphor of the journey, not just for those who walk this trail, but a people, and not just those who suffered and died, but the country.
What I took away with me was the image from the Negro Burial Ground sign that illustrates the Sankofa bird, which flies with its head facing backward. “Sankofa” in the Twi language of the Akan people of Ghana and the Ivory Coast means “to go back and get it.” The bird holds an egg in its beak to symbolize “the knowledge of the past upon which wisdom is based” and “also the generation to come” that may benefit.
(*By the way, Newton Ancarrow was not a 19th-century slave ship captain. Trained as a chemical engineer, he was speedboat builder who tested his vessels here during the 1960s and became an ardent activist for cleaning up the polluted James River. Then, few listened or cared. His legacy is a significant reason we have the James River Park System to walk through. )
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Stop 4: The Creole Revolt
How this story avoided big screen adaptation is befuddling, although few people know the details. The ship Creole carried more than 100 slaves for export from Richmond to New Orleans. Perhaps 90 of them were the charge of the infamous Robert Lumpkin, who would later run a slave holding and sale facility – a “jail” – in Shockoe Bottom. Madison Washington, one of the 90, instigated a revolt on the Creole on the night of Nov. 7, 1841. They took the ship to Nassau in the Bahamas because the British ended slavery in 1839. The action of Washington and his group gained freedom for 116 people and is generally considered the most successful slave revolt in the United States. (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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Stop No. 6: Slavery Challenged.
For sheer drama, this site with its view of the cityscape, river and sky is matched by the story told on the plaque. Slaves, often sold several times during their course of their lives, became broadcasters of news, telling the fate of families split apart and what they knew of abolitionist activity and revolts, successful and not. (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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The Winfree Cottage, Near Stop 15:
Perhaps nothing else demonstrates Richmond’s on-and-off again efforts to commemorate its slave past than this crackling little house sitting upon steel bars and in limbo. The forlorn structure greets the visitor on the way to the Lumpkin’s Jail archaeological site and the Negro Burial Ground. Emily Winfree, a former slave, was in 1866 given a cottage in Manchester by her former owner. In 2002 the Alliance to Conserve Old Richmond Neighborhoods , then a feisty preservation organization, saved the house from destruction. For a time, Winfree Cottage rested on a flatbed near 17th Street Farmer’s Market and finally closer to Lumpkin’s and patrols of police. The paint-flecked clapboard walls of Emily Winfree’s tiny house still await a useful rehabilitation. (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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(Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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(Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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(Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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(Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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The following three images produce some of the most striking and time-stopping of those presented along the course of the Slave Trail. This image, placed at approximately the same location as where it was taken more than a century ago, shows prostrate and burnt Richmond and feature African-American men and women who until a few days earlier were likely enslaved. The people are collected with their belongings, or that of a household, and await transportation out of the city. Here, they gaze at us from the bridge, their future then uncertain as was the rest of the nation. At the time of the picture, Lee may not nave yet surrendered, because although Richmond no longer housed the Confederate capital, the war went onward to Appomattox. Wartime photographers, eager to record and sell their pictures of the ruins of Richmond’s industrial, business and wharf district, didn’t follow the armies west. Hence, there are no images of the surrender proceedings or the aftermath until months later. (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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(Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
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Plant Zero:
This collection of art studios, galleries, special events spaces and a café is a good place to reflect on what you’ve seen and to fortify for the continuing walk. The Manchester, mozzarella, pesto mayo and tomato sandwich ($6.95), with coffee, absorbed my hunger. An open terrace featuring a central fountain that sparkles in the sun makes this spot downright civilized. Adjacent to Plant Zero is Art Works (that came first) and also the Artspace Gallery. Both can give you decompression space for the contemplation on how we as a species are capable of both beauty and brutality. Plant Zero overhauled a former tobacco package and carton factory and led the way to Manchester’s present roaring revival. 3 E. Third St., 231-6500, plantzero.com, plantzerocafe.com; Art Works, 291-1400, artworksrichmond.com; Artspace Gallery, 232-6464, artspacegallery.org. (Photo by Harry Kollatz Jr.)
