The steady drizzle may have dampened the 3.1-acre grassy field, but not the spirits of the nearly 90 people who showed up Oct. 10 at Richmond’s African Burial Ground for the 18th Annual Gabriel Gathering.
In September 2019, Richmond city council rejected a controversial resolution submitted by Mayor Levar Stoney on behalf of Weimans Bakery LLC.
In a major milestone in the decades-long struggle to reclaim and properly memorialize the downtown area that once was the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney has publicly committed $3.5 million in City money to create the Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park.
RICHMOND, VA, July 29 — In a major milestone in the decades-long struggle to reclaim and properly memorialize the downtown area that once was the epicenter of the U.S. domestic slave trade, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney has publicly committed $3.5 million in City money to create the Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park.
The Feb. 3 edition of The New Yorker (circulation 1.3 million) carried a major article titled “The Fight to Preserve African-American History” that includes the long struggle to reclaim Shockoe Bottom.
A few days after the massive Jan. 20 gun rights rally at Capitol Square, I heard there had been some vandalism around the Reconciliation Statue, the anti-slavery memorial at the northwest corner of 15th and East Main streets in downtown Richmond.
A study of the economic ramifications of the community-generated proposal for a nine-acre Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park addresses some fundamental questions about the project: How much would it cost, and how would it benefit the city, especially its Black community?
