Richmond, Virginia’s Shockoe Bottom was a center of the slave trade in the United States. Sales of human beings took place there throughout the 19th Century until the city was liberated by the Union Army in 1865. Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney released his proposed 2024 budget last week, with $2 million for the Shockoe Heritage Campus Interpretive Center. The two million dollars will be spent in addition to an $11 million grant from the New York-based Mellon Foundation to fund the interpretive center that will be located in the 12,300 square foot Main Street Station train shed.
The grant from the Mellon Foundation was announced in December. According to the Mellon Foundation:
Included in the grants announced today is $11 million to the City of Richmond for a Shockoe Heritage Campus Interpretive Center in Shockoe Bottom designed to recognize and commemorate histories of the domestic slave trade, of freed people, Virginia’s indigenous groups, Jewish communities, and other immigrant populations. This funding, which underscores Mellon’s ongoing commitment to transformational place-based work, will provide projects and organizations actively exploring ways to understand and uplift more complete histories with support for their programming, development, expanded operational capacity and more.
Representative of a dynamic convergence of history and historical reckoning, the City of Richmond and its institutions have extensively studied and interpreted their role in shaping the early United States through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. However, the City’s more complex histories, including its role in the slave trade, the establishment of Jim Crow laws, and the development and proliferation of Confederate iconography have been less openly explored.
“Richmond has been the site of many stories that have shaped our understanding of who we are as Americans, but public commemoration in Richmond historically has been limited to only a few,” said Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation. “Today, the people of this city are lifting up the collective memory of its historic Black communities, unflinchingly addressing the city’s past as the capital of the state with the most enslaved people prior to the Civil War, and participating in the reimagining of the city’s public spaces to better reflect the fullness of its history. We are proud to support the remarkable grantees across the city leading this work.”
In addition to the $11 million for the center, the Mellon Foundation also announced an award to the Valentine Museum:
- The Valentine Museum ($1.2 million) to reimagine the studio of Edward Valentine, sculptor of Lost Cause iconography; plan for reinterpretation of the Wickham House, a former site of enslavement; and provide deeper understanding of the Jim Crow era through powerful public experiences and expanded online resources. New research will encourage a broader and more honest interpretation of the history of both the Richmond region and the Valentine Museum.
Note: Feature photo from NPR shows the train shed where the center will be housed.
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