Originally published in the Winter 2024 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 74, printed February 21. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Winter 2024 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

On Tuesday, Feb. 27, the city of Richmond will present its proposed master plan – design and rationale – for the 10-acre Shockoe Bottom memorial park, including the signing of the city charter that commits a $42 million down payment of city and state funds for the project.

The unveiling of the master plan is scheduled to take place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Main Street Station, 1500 E. Main St. You must RSVP to attend, but the event is open to the public.

To register, call Athena Hanny at 804- 337-1337.

A long time coming

The master planning process has taken a year to process the history of the area, but also the history of the struggle to bring to fruition the place that should put Richmond on the contemporary map for historical truth-telling about slavery and our city’s role in it.

Full disclosure: Having served on the master planning committee, I have seen the plan, and I think it’s beautiful. Yet we must remember the expectations we have for a project like this:

Criteria for success

First, this project needs to convey the scale of this local history’s impact on society – what it meant to be a slavery-based culture and economy.

Second, the project needs to acknowledge that the physical landscape, these 10 acres, are the place where these activities took place, that the stories the project tells are authentic and that they also are representative of the places that did not survive to have their stories shared.

Third, the project must have relevance to the repair work needed to begin to make up for 246 years of enslavement and 400+ years of a white-supremacist ideology. The economic benefits, from contracts to good-paying jobs to dedicated tax revenues and career development, must first go to those descended from those who were enslaved.

Those expectations have come from the years of the Defenders listening to men, women and children in our Richmond community who are not typically considered “stakeholders,” as well as those involved in groundbreaking work around the country with global impact on fields such as anthropology, biology, archaeology, urban design and community-centered reclamation of Black resources in the USA and throughout the African diaspora.

Projects like the New York African Burial Ground have inspired and encouraged us when we didn’t know what might happen, only that it was important to persevere. Emancipation-era cemetery recovery projects and museums and universities examining their origins in slavery and white supremacy – documenting and learning from how these tasks are accomplished – are important to conversations about human value in society.

No ‘business as usual’

Meeting the expectations described above means we can’t just conduct all “business as usual.” After all, the “business” for Gabriel and his comrades in August 1800 was insurrection to end the system of slavery, which meant the upending of society.

In this moment, not doing business as usual means specifically ensuring that Black people and their ideas are not exploited for the “greater good,” but cultivated and nurtured for their own benefit and thereby fundamentally contributing to the greater local and human good.

How?

After a more-than-20-year struggle Richmond city government has finally agreed to activist demands that Shockoe Bottom, once the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade, be reclaimed and properly memorialized. This tremendous victory was the result of thousands of people, primarily Black but also many people of other races, taking up this cause as their own.

But in addition to this mass pressure, a big reason city government has finally agreed to properly memorialize the site was that it finally understood how much the expected increase in tourism to Richmond would mean for the city’s coffers – specifically, a big boost in tax revenue from tourists patronizing hotels, restaurants, etc., as well as visiting other “attractions” in the city.

The memorial park must materially benefit the Black community

The Defenders would like to demand that this increase in tax revenue go directly to benefit the Black community. The problem is, right-wing politicians have passed laws forbidding “set-asides” based on race.

That’s why we have raised the proposal that a substantial portion of this increase in tax revenue be directed to Richmond Public Schools and affordable housing, actions that would benefit all working-class Richmonders, but especially the descendant community.

Further, there must be a body or mechanism by which descendant community members will be permanent, contributing partners to the governance and programming of the proposed Shockoe Bottom memorial park.

And there must be assurance that this place will be the go-to space for fact-based, historical truth-telling and research that enables new scholarship, artistic interpretation and ongoing learning.

And it all must be done in such a way that it is accountable to the community, visible and understandable.

There are models for this kind of work and people from whom we can learn. The Family Representative Council for VCU’s East Marshall Street Well Project, the Montpelier Descendants Committee and The Lemon Project at the College of William and Mary are just three.

Now, let’s show up!

So, our job is to show up, be aware, and carry our expectations forward into reality.

See you at the city meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 27.

And please visit the Sacred Ground Project website for information on how to stay connected.