RICHMOND, VA. • The Manchester Slave Docks Trail — not as hard to find as we'd been warned it might be — begins in a distinctly modern setting: under a wide bridge carrying Interstate 95 over the James River, amid a forest of concrete pillars that support the traffic thundering overhead.
But the recently restored wood-chip trail that parallels the old Manchester Canal and river to the docks, a three-mile round trip, leads down a slight incline and into a tangle of trees and vines, entering a world that leaves the 21st century and motorized traffic noise behind. As we walked, conjuring images of the grim events that had taken place here long ago, we might not have been too surprised to see a procession of slaves in chains shuffling toward us.
My husband and I had come to Richmond to follow the designated Slave Trail consisting of nine stops around the city. Janine Bell of the Richmond Slave Trail Commission says the trail "reveals so much of our past that's hidden in plain sight. We invite people to see first-hand where history that helped shape the nation took place."
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Placards at the edge of the woods explain that the Manchester Canal, now mostly filled in for the levee, was built by slaves and Irish immigrants to provide power for a flour mill, cotton mill and foundry in the nearby town of Manchester, which was originally called Rocky Ridge, and in pre-Revolutionary War days was a busy slave market.
CHAINED AT THE NECK AND LEGS
To the east at the dock, which is a 600-foot long row of massive limestone blocks set a dozen feet above the sluggish green-black river, slave ships in the late 1700s unloaded their cargos: newly captured Africans. Chained at the neck and legs, the slaves would be marched along the path we were walking to the slave jails — moved at night so as to not "offend citizens with the horror of their oozing sores, filth and stench from the slave ships." For the 30 years before the Civil War, Richmond was the largest source of slaves on the East Coast.
From the 1820s until the war, slaves walked the path in the other direction, from holding facilities in Shockoe Bottom across the river to Manchester docks, as Richmond shipped 'surplus" slaves to markets farther south for resale to the huge sugar and cotton plantations after the tobacco economy hit a slump. By 1859 half a million slaves had been sold from Virginia to the Deep South, with more in 1854 than any other year, as many as 10,000 a month.
As we walked the seemingly remote trail, the "forgotten path of pain," which today is scented with the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle, we came on a couple of young African-American men sitting in lawn chairs fishing for blue crabs in the river. They called out a friendly greeting as we passed.
The stone dock, and the site of Rockett's Landing across the river, are the only lingering evidence of the commerce that for more than a century and a half had taken place there. Now the dock, bristling with fishing poles, is popular with fishermen, dozens this day.
On our walk back along the trail one of the crabbers, Joseph Reed, held out cold drinks. He introduced himself and his friend, Gary Culpepper, joked about the crabs they were catching, and commented that "except for the river being browner, everything here looks about like it did 200 years ago."
'SCARS OF SLAVERY' REMAIN
After asking us why we were visiting Virginia, he said his own ancestors had been slaves and may have walked this trail. But, he continued, with no apparent rancor, that "scars of slavery can still be seen in society today."
From the Interstate 95 bridge the walking trail continues up and along the levee and back to Hull Street (the levee is split by a railroad cut, but you can walk a short stretch of it).
Drive across Mayo Bridge to the Kanawha Canal. Built by a mostly slave labor force in the late 18th century, it was restored and reopened in 1999 (parking is available nearby). In its day the canal, now traversed by open-air sightseeing boats, provided not only the means to ship slaves to new owners, but also a way for slaves to escape.
Today a bronze box, measuring 2 feet square by 3 feet high, commemorates slave Henry "Box" Brown, a worker in a tobacco warehouse, who resolved to flee after his wife and three children were sold in 1848. With the help of a white shoemaker, he made his escape in a wood box this size, shipped north to Philadelphia. He later wrote: "Buoyed up by the prospect of freedom I was willing to dare even death itself."
Brown nearly suffocated during the 27-hour journey but arrived safely at the home of an abolitionist and became a well-known anti-slavery activist. His helper, Samuel Smith, was later arrested attempting to box up two other fugitives from slavery.
Drive west on 15th Street and turn right on East Main to Shockoe Bottom (the original Powhatan name for the area), where auction houses once sold human "goods" as well as corn, coffee and other commodities. The roughly 30-block area (bounded by Broad, 15th and 19th streets and the river) was the regional center for the slave trade, with four main dealers each with a jail-like compound surrounded by fences made of upright sharpened logs.
The "largest and most fearsome" was Lumpkin's Jail on 15th Street, better known as "the Devil's Half Acre." Owner Robert Lumpkin had "maximized his profits" by including a residence for his family and lodging for slave traders along with the slave-holding facility and auction house.
RED FLAGS WOULD INDICATE AN AUCTION
Cobblestone streets led from this "geographical heart of the slave trading district, 1852-1863," with some 50 slave-holding facilities, to fashionable hotels where dealers had offices and buyers rented upstairs rooms, a placard reads. Red flags would be raised over the roof of such fine establishments as the Bell, Exchange and Ballard hotels when an auction was to take place.
Two years after the Civil War ended, in 1867, Mary Ann Lumpkin, a black woman who was Robert's widow, with the help of white abolitionist Nathanial Colver, a Boston minister, turned the complex into a school for former slaves. It later became Virginia Union University.
At the corner of Main and 15th streets stands the Reconciliation Triangle, a memorial unveiled in 2007 to the British, African and American "triangular" trade route. Traders delivered more than 100,000 Africans to Virginia between the 17th century and American Revolution, and at least 260,000 more elsewhere in North America before 1808.
The "triangle" extended between Liverpool and other large British cities, Benin and other West African kingdoms, and Virginia and other North American colonies (similar statues also stand today in Liverpool and Benin).
On East Broad Street across from the site of Lumpkin's Jail a placard tells the story of Gabriel Prosser, a slave rebellion leader who was executed here on Oct. 10, 1800. Gabriel, a blacksmith from Brookfield plantation, had attempted to start an uprising on Aug. 30, "recruiting hundreds, perhaps thousands" to attack Richmond, demanding that all Virginia slaves be freed, adopting the motto "Death or Liberty."
Caught three weeks later, he was hanged here along with 25 supporters. Stones from the gallows platform were later used to build the overpass where the placard now stands.
Below (follow 16th Street to the parking lot for Virginia Commonwealth University to get there) is the Old Negro Burial Ground, where many of Richmond's "first citizens," slaves and poor free blacks, lie in unmarked graves.
Last stop on the trail is at Broad and College streets, where the First African Baptist Church was founded in 1841, after white members of First Baptist Church sold their building to a large congregation made up of slaves and free blacks (the current building, now used by Virginia Commonwealth University, replaced the original 30 years later). Law required a white minister, but African-American deacons and other church officers administered church and community affairs, making the church particularly important: At the time, gatherings of African-Americans outside of church were not allowed.
I followed the trail, which does, as Janine Bell had said, "throw open the door on Richmond's pre-Civil War history," using the Richmond Slave Trail Commission brochure and booklet "Seeing the Scars of Slavery in the Natural Environment" (which we bought for $2 at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia). However, three-hour guided group tours are available.
For information, contact the Richmond Slave Trail Commission at 1-804-644-3900; info@efsinc.org; or ontorichmond.com.
