Lumpkin’s Jail Project Community Meeting on March 7th

From Venture Richmond:

March 7, 2017
5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
Virginia Union University
Perkins Living and Learning Center, 1500 N Lombardy St.

The internationally recognized Cultural Practice of SmithGroupJJR and its team of museum and cultural experts have been engaged by the City of Richmond to work with the community to propose the best way to use and interpret the important site of Lumpkin’s Jail and its critical role in African American History.

Building upon “Richmond Speaks,” the City of Richmond is initiating the first stage of the process to develop the actual Lumpkin’s Slave Jail Site as the seed project in Shockoe Bottom along the Richmond Slave Trail. Please join us for this, the first in a series of community consultation meetings to be led by the SmithGroupJJR team.

“The Richmond slave trade is a national story that has been buried for over a century. It’s time for that story to be told,” says Senior Vice President Hal Davis, SmithGroupJJR’s lead architect and planner for the project. SmithGroupJJR is one of the firms that led the design and construction of the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

RSVP to Carolyn.Daughtry@richmondgov.com

To learn more about the site there is this 2009 Smithsonian article which offers a quick summary or this eleven page PDF by Richmond Slave Trail Commission.

Excerpt from the Slave Trail Commission’s paper:

Here he was destined to suffer, for four months, such revolting treatment as the vilest felons never undergo, and such as only revengeful slaveholders can inflict. The place of his confinement was a room only six or eight feet square, in the upper story of the jail, which was accessible only through a trap-door. He was allowed neither bed nor air; a rude bench fastened against the wall and a single, coarse blanket were the only means of repose.