In the nineteenth century, more than 300,000 men, women, and children were auctioned off as slaves in the Shockoe Bottom district of Richmond, Virginia. Second only to New Orleans, Richmond served as the largest market for the U.S. slave trade in the early nineteenth century. In the past five years, there has been a grassroots movement to build a memorial park in the Shockoe Bottom area to remember the historical significance of this area. Controversially, the city also has a growing interest in building a new stadium for the Flying Squirrels baseball team in the same district. The city is looking to stimulate the city’s economy through the construction of a new stadium, whereas others argue that a memorial park would bring in little revenue to the city. The council has proposed including a memorial heritage site within the baseball stadium complex. These two ideas have developed into a battle of what is most important for the needs of the city: a need for the community’s memory to be protected or the need to bring in significant profits for the city through a structure intended for public gatherings. Is the city better off with the construction of a baseball stadium or a memorial park in remembrance of Richmond’s slave trade? Continue reading
Tag Archives: Community
Community-controlled attractions: Locals wield more power than you think
From the 1830s to the Civil War, Richmond was the second largest slave-trading hub in the nation next to New Orleans. Shockoe Bottom, an area located along the James River, is one of Richmond’s oldest neighborhoods and was central in the slave trade. In a battle to preserve this Historic Slave Trade site, Ana Edwards, head of a coalition of scholars, artists, community activists, has argued recently that putting a minor league ballpark in Shockoe Bottom detracts from Richmond’s ability to come to terms with its slave past. Reasoning that if we do not deal with the slave trade history in Shockoe Bottom, Edwards continued, Richmond “will always struggle through this identity crisis that it has.” A museum in Shockoe Bottom would enable both local and national communities to interpret and examine Richmond’s role in the slave trade, shedding light on stories that deserve telling. In this, a slave trade museum or memorial site is important because it preserves the past and legitimatizes it by keeping the local communities incorporated in the past experiences. Continue reading