{"id":708,"date":"2017-07-21T10:00:19","date_gmt":"2017-07-21T14:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/?p=708"},"modified":"2017-07-21T11:16:19","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T15:16:19","slug":"an-inclusive-richmond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/2017\/07\/21\/an-inclusive-richmond\/","title":{"rendered":"The Valentine: An Inclusive Richmond"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Benjamin Pomerantz<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I visited The Valentine<\/a>, a museum in the city of Richmond that focuses on telling the story of Richmond\u2019s history. Now, to be clear, there are many ways and many perspectives from which to develop a historical narrative–from the white Confederate point of view, from the enslaved point of view, from the free black point of view, from the immigrant point of view, etc. Based on my experience, I thought that the curators of The Valentine did their best to make the museum\u2019s narrative of Richmond\u2019s history inclusive of all Richmonders. Instead of focusing on the story of a certain population of Richmond, The Valentine includes many perspectives of Richmond in an attempt to portray Richmond as a diverse city with people of many interacting beliefs, customs, and lifestyles. As someone partnering with Untold RVA<\/a>, it was exciting to see stories of black self-determination and resistance at a Richmond museum, especially because the city tends to memorialize the legacy of the Confederacy as opposed to the lives of enslaved people and free blacks in Richmond.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The permanent exhibit at The Valentine<\/a>, located on the main floor of the museum, is a large, square-ish room that did not provide many directions for navigation. Since I was without a tour guide, I spent the visit wandering the various portions of the exhibit. The exhibit is organized in a rather interesting way–instead of featuring sections based on time periods, regions, or populations, the Valentine is organized by question. For example, the \u201cWhat Do We Produce?\u201d section contained clothes and objects that Richmonders have used throughout the city\u2019s history, and the \u201cWhat Do We Value?\u201d section explored the many fights for American independence that have occurred in Richmond\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

The most provocative section at The Valentine, from my point of view, is the \u201cWho Has a Voice\u201d section. It is in this section that one can find the several aforementioned stories of black self-determination and resistance. It features a portrait of Gabriel<\/a>, who tried to seize the city of Richmond in order to resist slavery and free himself and other enslaved people from bondage, under a banner which reads \u201cDeath or Liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3860\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It also features a portrait of James Armistead Lafayette, a enslaved man\u00a0who volunteered with the patriot forces during the American Revolution as a spy. This act of self-determination allowed him to gain freedom for himself later in life. By including portraits of Gabriel and James in their exhibit, the curators of The Valentine show that these acts of black resistance and self-determination are important to the city of Richmond\u2019s history. At the same time, it should be noted that there were many types of black self-determination\u2014like teaching others in the black Richmond community to read, establishing churches, and developing businesses, for example\u2014that were largely excluded from the museum\u2019s exhibit.<\/p>\n

While my experience at The Valentine was a largely informative one, and while I was genuinely pleased to see several acts of black self-determination and resistance on display, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of information about the lives of enslaved people in Richmond. For a museum that proudly featured stories of enslaved people who fought for their freedom, it largely omitted information about the lives of those enslaved people. This is not to say that the museum doesn\u2019t even touch on the subject of slavery–it features a pair of leg shackles that an enslaved person\u00a0would have worn, and a mini-section on the slave trade, but it failed to give examples of what went on in the lives of enslaved Richmonders. It also fails to mention slavery in its description of Rockett\u2019s Landing, which used to be a slave port, describing it as \u201cRichmond\u2019s first urban center\u201d but not as a port for the slave trade, the largest one outside of New Orleans. So, while The Valentine tries to tell as many narratives as it can\u00a0of Richmond\u2019s history, it is important to recognize that the narrative of the enslaved is a key component of the city\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Pomerantz<\/strong>\u00a0is a rising junior majoring in American Studies and minoring in both Rhetoric & Communication Studies and History. This is his first time working with the Race and Racism Project, and he is very happy to be able to join the team for this summer as an A&S Summer Research Fellow.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Benjamin Pomerantz A few weeks ago, I visited The Valentine, a museum in the city of Richmond that focuses on telling the story of Richmond\u2019s history. Now, to be clear, there are many ways and many perspectives from which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2990,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[64771,64781,64769],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-as-summer-fellows-2017","tag-benjamin-pomerantz","tag-site-visit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2990"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}