[News] Slavery, Sacred Ground, Richmond, Virginia

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Subject: Re: Sacred Ground, Richmond, Virginia

From: Robert Hinton [mailto:robert.hinton at nyu.edu]

It appears that business leaders in Richmond, Virginia, calling
themselves "The Richmond Baseball Initiative," are planning to build a
baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, the site of one of the largest
slave-trading markets in the country. According to the community
group, "The Defenders of Freedom, Justice, and Equality," after the
Atlantic slave trade became illegal in 1808, some 300,000 to 350,000
enslaved African Americans were sold down the James River to
plantations in the Deep South from Shockoe Bottom, the location of the
Omohundro Slave Jail.

Just north of Shockoe Bottom is an abandoned "Burial Ground for
Negroes" that is covered by a parking lot. In the nineteenth century,
according to the Defenders, this was also the location of the public
gallows where it is believed that Gabriel (AKA Gabriel Prosser) was
executed.

The Defenders have pressed Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, the
former governor of Virginia, to stop contruction of the stadium and
instead to build a museum of slavery and a genealogy center on the
site. Wilder, who has in the past called for the construction for such
a museum, seems open to the Defenders' demand but claims to lack
public support.

The Defenders publish their own newspaper, "The Richmond Defender."
For more information:

The Defenders for Freedom, Justice, and Equality
Post Office Box 23202
Richmond, Virginia 23222
Telephone/Facsimile: 1.804.644.5834


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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