Retracing Our Past: Ana Edwards
Born in Los Angeles, California in 1960, Ana holds a bachelor of arts in Visual Arts (1983) from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, and master of arts in history, a post-baccalaureate certificate in public history from Virginia Commonwealth University (2020). She is currently working with the American Civil War Museum in visitor engagement, interpretation, education and exhibit planning; and is public historian for the Defenders' Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, Richmond, Virginia.
Image by Michael Lease
What is Richmond’s significance in the slave trade?
Richmond’s claim to historical significance during slavery is that it evolved, over the thirty years leading to and through the American Civil War, to become the second largest marketplace for the U.S. domestic slave trade.
Virginia had one of the highest Black populations of the southeastern states and the capital city sat on the falls, geographically well situated to move large numbers of enslaved people to markets in the deep south via the many transportation systems that intersected there.
Overland roads that connected Alexandria and Washington DC trade to Richmond where people would be put on ships to sail the James River to the Chesapeake to the Atlantic and on to ports in Charleston, Savannah, and finally to New Orleans, which led the trade in longevity and scale. The railroad system shipped people and livestock along with hard goods.
In Richmond's Shockoe Valley, there were upwards of 40-50 trader offices, auction sites, hotels, jails or pens, including large-scale operators like Robert Lumpkin, Silas Omohundro, Hector Davis, the Dickinsons, among many others.
Between the trade through Richmond and the rest of the state, Virginia exported some 300,000 to 350,000 men, women and children from 1830-1865. The very last remnants of Shockoe Bottom land available to show and tell these stories, and the scale of those operations, are the basis of the nine-acre, community-planned Shockoe Bottom Memorial Park (the footprint of which includes the Devil's Half Acre and blocks to the east where more trading offices and pens).
Can you share about the experiences of free Black people during slavery?
Before the Revolutionary War there were somewhere between three and six thousand free Black people living in Virginia. By comparison there were more than 187,600 enslaved here. Black people became free through many means. There were those very few who had never been enslaved, typically mixed race people descended from white servant mothers and fewer in number in the South than in New England. Between 1726 and 1782 it was illegal for a slave owner to manumit a slave without government approval and even then the reason had to be related to some extraordinary service to the commonwealth.
In 1782, the Manumission Act was a post-Revolutionary gesture which, over the next eight years, resulted in the number of free Black people increasing to more than 12,800 people. Lydia Broadnax, Christopher McPherson, Gilbert Hunt, Robert Cowley, and many others were people who began as enslaved but gained their freedom and spent their free lives in Richmond during this early national period. But, as far as whites were concerned, especially those in charge of civic life, free Black people were a “standing problem” because they “lived in a society intended for two classes only--free whites and Negro slaves” (Jackson, 1944).
The condition of Black people was distinguished primarily by not being enslaved, and the ability to buy and own land or property. Any other rights of a citizen were respected at the will of the next white person. There were always the few who prospered by learning a skilled trade, being particularly good hucksters (resellers), and managed to buy urban properties or farmland to build their wealth. Men and women owned businesses, homes and occasionally held others in bondage, though usually relatives or kin to keep households intact or assist others to freedom. It was a precarious existence and the vast majority of free Black people were poor farm laborers with many migrating to port cities and towns where there were more jobs or the possibility of apprenticeships. Women worked as domestics, seamstresses, washerwomen, and caregivers. They competed with laboring whites in the search of work and their wages were consistently lower.
The legal importation of captive Africans ended in 1808 and with it the pressure to control the physical and social mobility of an ever growing free Black population increased. A law passed in 1806 that declared that newly freed people risked being re-enslaved if they didn't leave the state within twelve months. If a Black person couldn't show proof of employment by some white person he or she could be arrested for vagrancy and sold to labor unpaid. Indebtedness meant for many that it was far easier to be returned to slavery than to hold onto freedom. And yet, where they could, free Black people established communities with taverns, shops, churches, even schools, and networks working toward greater social stability, abolition, and protection for people fleeing slavery.
What did you uncover in your research that resonated most or were you surprised to learn?
That the study of Gabriel’s Rebellion would lead me to a deeper understanding of the founding of this country, to the impact of the Haitian Revolution on the formation of the new United States, and that much of the dynamic between the US and Haiti dates back to that time. That we all live amongst people experiencing horrors we don’t know how to stop. That people manage, in spite of all unimaginable conditions, to reach for the normalcy of love, family, and livelihood. That there have been dozens of Black historians throughout the African Diaspora that have been recording the truth of our histories for far longer than we think, and that any of us can now know about them. All we have to do is ask.
Why is it important for both descendants of enslaved people and all people to learn about Richmond’s history?
Because it gives us the truths we need to more accurately understand one another and who we are today, so that we can find our shared optimisms and make cohesive plans for a more just and humane future. #MFGK
How has connecting to Richmond’s history impacted you personally?
Connecting to Richmond’s history has helped me find my anger and find it useful. For a non-confrontational person that is a big deal. I, like so many others, am in search of my family’s roots in Virginia, and I am very very close. Being a part of changing the historical landscape of Richmond has given me confidence and a sense of belonging to this place even though the last time one of my ancestors was in Richmond, she was for sale. Learning and sharing the history is energizing because I’ve seen it turn lights on in people’s eyes.
A Sound History for the Trail of Enslaved People" is an artwork by Dr. Vaughn W. Garland and Right Here Once.org. This audio walk and digital map is a part of a series of works featuring field recordings and community conversation around Richmond, VA
Learn More
Ana's Research
Sacred Ground Project