New Shockoe Institute exhibit confronts Richmond’s ‘complex and painful’ role in slavery

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- The first permanent exhibit by the Shockoe Institute is tracing the history of slavery, in what once was a major hub for the domestic slave trade.

"Expanding Freedom" was unveiled in Main Street Station on Thursday, April 9. It is an interactive exhibit, where creators say visitors will go on a learning journey through the timeline of racial slavery in the United States.

"We teach because the cause of human freedom has never been advanced by expecting someone to know something they have never been taught," said Marland Buckner, President and CEO of the Shockoe Institute.

Buckner and the team behind the exhibit came together Thursday with city and state leadership and dozens of Virginia high school students to be the first to see "Expanding Freedom."

Part of the exhibit is "the Lab," which Buckner said was designed especially with young people in mind to give them an opportunity to put the lessons of history to work and brainstorm real world solutions to improve current life.

"There is nothing wrong with who we are that cannot be fixed by what is right with who we are," Buckner said. "If we all work together to expand human freedom, and in so doing, bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice."

The project was funded by an $11 million grant from the Mellon Foundation and included no taxpayer dollars.

The exhibit's permanent home is Main Street Station, which curators said is significant because of the way the rail system was used to advance the slave trade.

Mayor Danny Avula said the exhibit's location in Richmond is key to dealing with the city's role in slavery and it's "complex and painful" legacy.

"Because the sheer scale of the domestic slave trade here in Richmond, it's estimated that one in four black people in this country can trace their ancestry back to Richmond," Avula said. "So there's a broader mission to this work, one that not only contributes to the healing of our city, but to the healing of our entire nation."

The exhibit opens to the public Sunday, April 12. Visit the Shockoe Institute website to reserve timed entry tickets.