Richmond's Racial Reconciliation

Thank you to our incredible sponsors, TD Bank and The Washington Informer, for making this trip a reality!

Our nation has a complicated relationship with its history, proud patriotism standing hand in hand with a poisoned past of racial injustice and white supremacy. As a progressive city that was once a center of the Atlantic slave trade and capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia knows this all too well. It’s a city that has made great strides in reconciling with its racial past – though much work remains to be done – and one we chose to tour last month as part of our Civil Rights Learning Journeys series.

Our day started at the Richmond Enslaved Africans Trail. Beginning at the Manchester Docks, once a major port in the slave trade, the walking trail chronicles a period that turned Richmond into the largest source of enslaved Africans on the east coast from 1830 to 1860. While our time on the trail was brief, the impact was no less powerful. Led by Rev. Dr. Sylvester L. “Tee” Turner, our group walked hand in hand in silence, united in a common fate and an uncertain future.

Our next stop was The Valentine, Richmond’s first museum that inevitably has roots in racism and white supremacy. While the museum is awash with the history of Virginia’s capital, the main purpose of the visit was to view one artifact: the statue of Jefferson Davis that once stood on Richmond’s Monument Avenue. This statue was toppled by activists during the period of unrest and uprising that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Sculpted by the brother of the ounder of The Valentine, it was a monument to the Lost Cause, erected to solidify the legacy of the confederacy. In a little over a century, the statue would find itself not standing proudly for an unjust and terroristic state, but prone, battered and bruised, a symbol of failure. It’s a reminder of the horrible history it represents but at the same time emblematic of a better future towards which the city strives.

Of course, the Jefferson Davis statue was not the only Lost Cause artifact built in Richmond. Far from it, in fact; 1890 saw the opening of Monument Avenue, a broad, tree-lined boulevard envisioned as a statuary promenade of Virginian confederates. Monuments to J.E.B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and Robert E. Lee dotted the road as it worked its way across the city. In 1996 a new monument was added, that of tennis legend Arthur Ashe, born and raised in Richmond.

As we traveled down Monument Avenue, Ashe’s monument was the only one that remained. Much was made of Richmond’s decision to remove publicly owned Lost Cause monuments in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and for good reason: it was a blueprint for a path forward, a reconciliation with a tangible past, and very public reaction against systemic racism, white supremacy, and racial violence. And we were fortunate to hear from an unexpected voice in the movement: Devon Henry. His company, Team Henry Enterprises, shouldered the mantle of the first government-sanctioned removal, that of Robert E. Lee. He spoke of practical issues, the how of it all, but more important was the why, the fear his family felt for him and the duty he felt to tackle the problem head on. An unlikely and unspoken hero in the fight, his story was easily a highlight of our journey.

We ended on one more monument, an equestrian statue at first glance indistinguishable from those that once stood nearby. But soon details begin to emerge: the rider is black, his dreadlocks lifted in the wind, clad in a hoodie, ripped jeans, and Nikes. Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War was directly inspired by the now-removed monument to Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart, sculpted before the 2020 uprisings but very much in dialogue with that pivotal movement in the city’s recent past. In its iconography, its reflection on and its reconciliation with history, it was a fitting end to a day focused on not only confronting the past but also building something better, tearing down the tortured legacy on the road to renewal and rebirth.