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Towards a people’s history of landscape: The National Endowment for the Humanities program facilitates Richmond geography as a critical window to the past
By David Slipher
On a humid summer day in Shockoe Bottom, as the sunlight cuts the morning shade, Dr. Meghan Gough and her collaborators gather a group outside the Richmond Main Street Station. They’re meeting with Ana Edwards, public historian and founding chair of the Defenders’ Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, and Kimberly Chen, senior manager at the City of Richmond, to learn about the grounds of the historic Lumpkin's Slave Jail. Their purpose extends beyond a simple tour; these higher-ed scholars aim to advance the research and instruction of Indigenous and Black historical narratives and have joined together to develop an online repository of teaching modules, inspired by the complex geographical history of the city.
The commonwealth’s capital city is deeply entwined with its complex historical narratives — which continue to unfold with more research. The group met with genealogist Lenora McQueen and Ryan Smith, VCU professor of history, to discuss the history and continuing developments at Richmond’s Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground. Recently, the Washington Post revealed recent discoveries made by ground-penetrating radar have revealed 134 intact graves at the site, further illuminating a somber past. From 1845 to 1865, Shockoe Bottom was the nation’s second-largest hub for the trafficking of enslaved people. Estimates suggest that the African Burying Ground contains more than 22,000 graves.
View the NEH program in photos
Reimagining reconciliation in RVA
Richmond’s deep-rooted history as a center of slave trading serves as a critical site for reexamining physical spaces and the painful echoes of a bygone era. Through funding by a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for higher education faculty, Gough, an Associate Professor at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, led the group of twenty-two scholars from around the country. They came together to probe how America’s landscapes and built environments reflect the nation’s racial histories.
Carlyn Ferrari, an assistant professor of African and African American studies at Seattle University noted the profound impact of physical spaces.“The site visits to places like the Shockoe Bottom and East End/Evergreen cemeteries enabled me to experience Richmond's history in a powerful, meaningful way and see how community members and the city are taking steps to grapple with and reconcile with its history.”
Over three weeks, the practitioners explored ways to build capacity and support for the untold narratives of these enslaved peoples. This approach challenged prevailing perceptions about the reality of place and its influence on society, necessitating a deep analysis that confronts established historical knowledge.
The program has given program assistant and Wilder School graduate student Becky Skatoff much to consider. “I suspect it will take some time to fully process and unpack the richness of this experience and the knowledge provided. However, it has already inspired and altered my perspective on how I would like to approach my [graduate] capstone.”
Gough’s long-standing relationships within the community have been instrumental in shaping the program’s framework and impact. After more than sixteen years of local engagement and alliance building, she’s fully attuned to the need to elevate the role of critical place inquiry in understanding the various histories and meanings in the built environment.
“Working with our network of local leaders and advocates of Black and Indigenous histories — from members of the Pumunkey tribe to the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality to the Friends of East End Cemetery and many others — provided the opportunity to more deeply understand and interrogate narratives of place and practices of monumentality and memory; their involvement was absolutely central to the success of the NEH Summer Institute.”
Crossing town, crossing disciplines
Program participants from 22 colleges and universities worked across disciplines such as theater, literature, architecture and urban planning to model approaches to landscape-oriented and place-based social histories. The program builds on a 2022 NEH Summer Institute led by the University of Virginia and Harvard University that explored landscapes and place in Washington D.C.
For Peter Wang, an assistant professor of art history and visual studies at the University of Kentucky, the program was an eye-opener. “I learned why and how space is often racialized,” he shared. My group focused on the moving body of water, especially the James River, so it was interesting to see some shared and different relationships and stories with water from different places within our group, including themes of labor, leisure, and life.”
Field tours enabled participants to experience different sites to help build out the social cartography of the region. Despite the summer swelter, the majority of field trips beyond the VCU campus were led on foot, with the aim of full sensory immersion. They toured Shockoe Bottom, East End Cemetery, exhibits and archives in the Library of Virginia, Monument Avenue, Arthur Ashe Boulevard, the Capitol grounds, Morven Farm and the Jefferson School of African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville and more.
Visits to these key sites helped contextualize cultural landscapes and untangle a web of discriminatory policies, including redlining, urban renewal, highway development and continuing redevelopment and gentrification.
“Working with the Library of Virginia, the Valentine Museum and other scholars, we highlighted the importance — and the limits — of the archives in understanding Virginia’s layered and complex cultural landscapes,” Gough said. “Participants worked to foreground Black and Indigenous counternarratives in the landscape, along with the patterns of power and marginalization that undermine their telling.”
Program organizers and participants agree: Richmond, like many places across the nation, cannot overcome history’s shadows in silence. Only intentional research, exploration, and candid confrontation will bring understanding to the present.
“Knowing a fact, like where Lumpkin's Jail or the African Burial Ground are on a map, is very different to standing there in the summer heat and listening to Ana Edwards bring that landscape to life,” said Meghan Townes, a Boston University American and New England studies Ph.D. student.
“Richmond has the sense of there being only a thin separation between the past and the present; when you move through the city on foot you feel the thickness of stories lying on the land,” said Townes.