Originally published in the Spring 2022 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 68, printed April 21. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Spring 2022 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Ana Edwards

“Gabriel’s House” is the new name of the building that houses the Department of African American Studies of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Removal of the former name, Harrison House, was approved on March 22 by the school’s board of visitors and is part of a slate of recommendations made to the VCU Office of the President by its Committee on Commemorations and Memorials that has been completed since the summer of 2020.

As quoted in the VCU News on March 22, the department, “… cognizant of the historical importance of self-naming for Black people in this country and in this spirit of self-definition and self-determination – we began a process to select a name that reflected the spirit of the department and the pedagogical mission of our discipline,” according to a document the department submitted to the board in support of the new name.

There is a history of association between the department and Gabriel’s Rebellion. An anthropology lecture hosted by the department in 1999 introduced this writer to the rebellion. Ten years later, the chair of the department, Shawn Utsey, produced the first documentary film about the struggle to reclaim and memorialize the African Burial Ground where Gabriel is believed to have been hanged. In 2011, the Afrikana student association staged the only student-initiated protest to draw on-campus attention to the Burial Ground struggle.

The story of the organized attempt to end slavery and the reclamation of the site represent both principals of self-definition and self-determination applied by the Black community, and reaffirmed by the actions of the Af Am Studies department.