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No Baseball Stadium in Shockhoe Bottom!
Statement by the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality
The Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality, an organization of Richmond-area residents working to improve the lives of the people in our community, is completely opposed to the construction of a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom.
We share the concerns of other groups working to preserve the historically and architecturally significant buildings in the area. We support the nearby
residents concerned that their quality of life could be negatively impacted by increased traffic, noise and demands for parking. We agree that the city seems
once again poised to embark on a giant and questionable financial investment for which current and future residents will pay in increased taxes, while
fundamental social and economic needs remain inadequately funded or simply ignored. At the same time, our primary concern is that the area being targeted for a commercial baseball stadium is the site of Richmond's
slave-trading industry.
After the Transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in 1807, between 300,000 and 350,000 people of African descent were sold from the
auction houses in Richmond's Shockoe Bottom into lives of chattel slavery on Southern plantations. Virginia's slave owners literally bred human beings for profit,
and Richmond became one of the country's most important slave-trading centers. As a result, this area may be one of the most historically significant in Virginia,
and indeed the country as a whole.
We are not talking about a half-dozen still-standing buildings from the 18th century. We are talking about an entire district of this city that was dedicated to the slave trade and its supporting industries. This commercial complex occupied the territory from the Manchester Docks on the south side of the James River, across the Mayo Bridge, through Shockoe Bottom, north to East Broad Street and a few blocks beyond.
We are also talking about an era of economic boom for a privileged few who grotesquely suppressed the right of human dignity in the interest of brutal economic exploitation. In 1863 alone, Richmond's trade in human beings produced $4.5 million in sales, a colossal sum for that time. (That cold commercialism is today echoed when wealthy investors in large urban development projects promise abundant low-wage service jobs to secure public support for their profit-making schemes.)
But numbers alone cannot capture the reality of the history of Shockoe Bottom. Perhaps one story can help. Back in 1988, a Los Angeles-born member of our organization moved to Richmond from New York City. As she prepared for the move, she received the following message from her grandmother in Southern California: "You know, one of your ancestors was sold from the auction block in Richmond." The family story had been retold through the years of a young girl whose lasting memory was of the silhouetted form of her mother waving good-bye, receding into the mists that rose from the James River as the boat on which the girl stood carried her South and away from the docks of Manchester.
Adding to the significance of this area, the "Burial Ground for Negroes" lay just north of what is now East Broad Street. Thousands of enslaved and free people of African descent as well as poor whites found their final resting place here until the early 1800s. In the center of this Burial Ground stood the Richmond Gallows, where the great slave-rebellion leader Gabriel was executed on Oct. 10, 1800. Today the Burial Ground lies unmarked under a private parking lot, waiting for its appropriate acknowledgment as a sacred place.
Despite this city's near-obsession with its history, Richmonders today have little understanding of these sites or the enormity of their city's slave trade and the important role it played in the development of Virginia and the country as a whole. In order to preserve the real history of African people in the United States – as well as contribute to an understanding of the present-day economic and social problems that flow from that history, this area needs to be appropriately reclaimed, preserved and memorialized.
That reclamation, so important to the future of Richmond's social health, would be impossible if plans to construct a baseball stadium on this land were to proceed. We stand at a crossroads in Richmond's development. We must not allow the schemes of a few profit-hungry private investors to steer us down the wrong path. We say "No!" to a baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom.
The Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality
c/o Asbury United Methodist Church, 324 N. 29th St., Richmond, VA 23223
Ph/Fax: 804.644.5834; e-mail: DefendersFJE@hotmail.com; Web site: http://DefendersFJE.tripod.com