This 1853 drawing by British artist Eyre Crowe of enslaved people waiting to be auctioned in Richmond was part of a Library of Virginia exhibition about the domestic slave trade. (Image courtesy of Library of Virginia)
The inaugural community meeting of the Shockoe Alliance — an initiative first previewed by Mayor Levar Stoney during his annual State of the City speech in February — will be Monday at 6 p.m. at Main Street Station, with the goal of uniting a vision for a small area plan encompassing Shockoe Bottom.
“We want to ensure that a diversity of stakeholders are a part of the collective process of determining how to most appropriately commemorate the significant history of this area, preserve treasured historic resources and promote equitable opportunities for growth and sustainability,” the mayor says in a statement announcing the meeting. The announcement notes that Native Americans lived in Shockoe Bottom before it was colonized by English settlers and that it became the country’s second largest center for the buying and selling of enslaved Africans.
At Monday’s community meeting, attendees can expect opening remarks to be followed by interactive breakout-style-sessions focused on gathering feedback on the Shockoe Alliance’s proposed vision and mission statements, and what Shockoe Bottom should look like in the future. The event will be the first of four community sessions intended to align the plans proffered by different groups.
“I think it’s a good time for folks to come and bring their little bit of Shockoe to the meeting and provide input,” says Stoney policy advisor Maggie Anderson, “We’ll have a way for folks to provide an oral or written history of what Shockoe means to them, so I think it’ll be a great way for folks to come together about this.”
The Alliance is charged with guiding the design and implementation of recommendations for the future of Shockoe Bottom. It comprises stakeholders from the Rose Center for Public Leadership’s Rose Fellows, which Stoney and Richmond City Council President Cynthia Newbille were both awarded last year; the Slave Trail Commission, headed by Del. Delores McQuinn, who will present remarks on Monday evening; the Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project; Preservation Virginia; the Shockoe Bottom Neighborhood and Business Associations and the mayor’s recently-formed History and Culture Commission.
The Shockoe Alliance will build on the previous work of architectural firm and consultant group SmithGroup JJR — which held a similar series of interactive community meetings to gain input for the memorialization of Lumpkin’s Slave Jail site throughout 2017 and 2018 before pausing its work – says Hal Davis, vice president and architect.
“We are waiting for some things to be handled at the city level and as soon as those all get resolved we'll be back on the project,” Davis says, noting SmithGroup has an ongoing contract with the city.
In 2016, then-Mayor Dwight Jones announced that the city would move forward with the commemoration of the Lumpkin’s Slave Jail site — also known as the “Devil’s Half Acre” — with SmithGroup JJR handling the $19 million redevelopment of the city-owned parcel.
During the previous year, Jones’ administration led a community conversation series called “Richmond Speaks” to determine what would happen to the site, which was excavated in 2005.
As far as agreement on how to memorialize the area, there have been some differences of opinion. At the 2016 announcement, for example, then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe floated the idea of a statue memorializing Abraham Lincoln “right here at Lumpkin’s Jail to show the world the part of history that we have here.” Meanwhile, participants in the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice and Equality’s Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation project have long lobbied for a 9-acre Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park encompassing the Lumpkin’s site as well as the adjacent African Burial Ground — a plan supported by the Richmond NAACP, as well as by Stoney when he was a candidate for mayor. But it was McAuliffe’s predecessor, Gov. Bob McDonnell, who lobbied for and signed off on the $11 million that state lawmakers set aside for the project, which has still not been completed.
Then, in early February, the Rose Center for Public Leadership, (jointly operated by the National League of Cities and the Urban Land Institute) spent a week in Richmond advising the mayor on the best way forward to implement a shared vision for Shockoe Bottom — a 129-acre district within the larger Shockoe Valley — “to help it find a way forward that balances community interest in the preservation of its historical sites while creating a viable economic platform ... that can help fund the infrastructure needed to support all types of development in the district,” according to a Feb. 5 news release from the Rose Center, which also notes that the city has enlisted the SmithGroup “to lead partnership efforts to develop a museum at the Lumpkin's Jail site.”
On Friday, Davis of SmithGroup said he was unsure of the timeline for his firm’s work.
“At the moment, anyway, we're waiting on a few things to come back to the city on a couple studies being done and as soon as we get some results from those studies, we'll know better the timeframe,” Davis said. “It's all being done through the city.”
