Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground (Richmond, Virginia)

Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground (Richmond, Virginia)

“Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground.” Sacred Ground Histprical Reclamation Project, https://www.sacredgroundproject.net/p/richmonds-african-burial-ground.html. Accessed on 02 Dev 2024. “Richmond’s African Burial Ground.” Historical Marker Database, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=256300. Accessed on 02 Dec 2024.

empancipationmonument

1799-1816

Birte Burkart

Physical Object

2583

m x m x m

current,37.537051622449845,, -77.42727439824525;

Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground (Richmond, Virginia)

TEXT

https://www.cineg.org/wiki/index.php/Shockoe_Bottom_African_Burial_Ground_(Richmond,_Virginia)_

Cemetery

2011 by Richmond Slave Trail Commission. (Marker Number 16.)

City of Richmond

"Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi." "It is not wrong to go backfor that which you have forgotten." - A proverb of the Akan people of West Africa This Burial Ground for Negroes (ca. 1750-1816), reclaimed as Richmond's African Burial Ground, is the oldest municipal cemetery for enslaved and free blacks known to have existed in the Richmond area, and may be among the oldest in the entire country. This is the final resting place for many of the Africans who arrived on Virginia's shores in chains from West and Central Africa, as well as for people of African descent born in Virginia. While disrespected, exploited and terribly abused in their lifetimes, their forced, unpaid labor established an economic basis for the development not only of Richmond, Virginia, and the South, but also contributed to the development of the United States as a whole. Because of Richmond's central role in this country's internal slave trade, descendants of those buried here can likely be found throughout North America. The relationship Paid Advertisement Click on the ad for more information. Please report objectionable advertising to the Editor. that Africans saw between the living and the dead was demonstrated in burial rituals. Research conducted at other locations, such as New York City's African Burial Ground, shows that people often were interred with offerings and according to family groups, wearing African-style clothing and beads. Sometimes there were double burials of family members, such as a parent and a child. Burying the dead is one of the fundamental practices that distinguishes human beings from animals, and the care that the families of those buried here showed their departed was an expression not only of their love for their family members, but also a defiant affirmation of their own humanity, so cruelly denied them by the society that saw them only as chattel fit for exploitation. This Burial Ground was also the site of the Town Gallows, where Virginia's young freedom-fighting hero Gabriel of the nearby Prosser plantation was executed on Oct. 10, 1800, for his role in attempting to lead a mass rebellion against slavery. Courageously, Gabriel planned a coup against Virginia's government. He established methodology from observing the American Revolution and the triumphs of enslaved Africans in Haiti. Gabriel and 25 other enslaved Africans were executed here or in three other locations after courts convicted them for their roles in the conspiracy. In 2007, Governor Timothy M. Kaine pardoned Gabriel, saying, "Gabriel's cause -- the end of slavery and the furtherance of equality of all people -- has prevailed in the light of history.

Virginia

Emancipation

Powhatans

1554 E. Broad street Richmond