In Shockoe Bottom, Richmond Must Tell the Truth about the Past to Thrive in the Future

This article was originally posted by Michael Paul Williams in the Richmond Times Dispatch. To read the rest of the article, click here.

In Shockoe Bottom, we’ve been trying to build a slave trade heritage site without a proper foundation.

We have attempted to bypass the ugly truth of what transpired in Shockoe Bottom — and how it informs current-day Richmond — as we pursued a hollow reconciliation.

On Thursday, a panel of development and design experts told a gathering at Main Street Station — a stately Victorian-era structure built atop the rubble of Richmond’s slave trade district — that if we’re going to truly create a “hub of reconciliation” and a “site of conscience” in Shockoe Bottom, we must dig deeper……read the full article.