New Shockoe exhibit confronts Richmond's slavery role

Richmond’s new Shockoe Institute has opened a permanent exhibit that puts the city’s slave-trading past at the center of the story. (vpm.org) The exhibit, called “Expanding Freedom,” premiered on April 9 at Main Street Station in Shockoe Bottom, the neighborhood that was once the center of Richmond’s trade in enslaved people. The institute says the immersive show spans 10,000 square feet, while VPM reports the broader center occupies more than 12,000 square feet. (shockoeinstitute.org, vpm.org) Gov. Abigail Spanberger, Mayor Danny Avula and Sen. Tim Kaine joined the opening, and more than 60 Virginia high school students took part in the first day’s programming. The public opening followed on April 12 with timed-entry tickets. (shockoeinstitute.org, wric.com) The location is the point. Shockoe Bottom was the largest slave-trading center in the Upper South, and historians describe it as the nation’s second-largest domestic slave-trade site after New Orleans. (virginiahistory.org, savingplaces.org) The exhibit tracks how racial slavery expanded from colonization and Virginia law into a national business after Congress ended the transatlantic slave trade in 1808. Encyclopedia Virginia says Richmond auctioneers and traders in Shockoe Bottom helped drive that internal market as demand for labor grew in the Deep South. (shockoeinstitute.org, encyclopediavirginia.org) Shockoe Institute says more than 850,000 Black people were trafficked from the Upper South to the Lower South in that domestic trade. VPM reported CEO Marland Buckner said no city outside New Orleans traded more human beings as property than Richmond did in the decades before the Civil War. (shockoeinstitute.org, vpm.org) Inside, visitors move through seven sections and then into “The Lab,” a learning space built for discussion, digital research and civic programming. The Richmonder reported students used the lab during opening events, and the institute says it is meant to turn historical study into present-day problem solving. (shockoeinstitute.org, richmonder.org) The site sits near African burial grounds and the former Lumpkin’s Jail complex, where enslaved people were confined before sale. Encyclopedia Virginia says that jail operated from the 1830s until the end of the Civil War and became known as “the Devil’s half acre.” (vpm.org, encyclopediavirginia.org) The project was paid for with an $11 million grant from the Mellon Foundation and no taxpayer dollars, according to the institute and local coverage. RichmondBizSense reported the opening marked the debut of the education center after a ribbon-cutting earlier this month. (shockoeinstitute.org, richmondbizsense.com) Avula said at the opening that “one in four black people in this country can trace their ancestry back to Richmond,” underscoring how far the city’s slave-trade footprint reached. The exhibit’s bet is that Richmond will now be known not only for what happened in Shockoe Bottom, but for how publicly it is being taught there. (wric.com, richmonder.org)