A 2023 research essay for the Judy Project written VCU undergraduate Kade McGrail, a senior pursuing a history major and religious studies minor. The essay is part one of a project researching Richmond Hill’s full religious history in relation to race. This part covers the site’s history from approximately the sixteenth century up until the start of the Civil War.
Early this month, Elizabeth S. Kostelny, the CEO of Preservation Virginia, the oldest statewide preservation organization in the nation, wrote to share her organization’s support for the Judy Project at Richmond Hill. She wrote in part: I write to lend our support to the Judy Project and its goal to unearth this forgotten history and restore the space for reflection, dialogue, and healing. By envisioning a place that is educational and restorative, the team at Read more…
Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Michael Paul Williams writes of Richmond Hill and the legacy and future of the dwelling of the enslaved in the July 16, 2022, Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Unearthing Buried Stories: The Exhibit is an effort by Richmond Hill to live into its mission, which is to seek the healing of metropolitan Richmond through hospitality, prayer, racial reconciliation and spiritual development. Black and white people in this country have been harmed in very different ways by a culture of white supremacy, enslavement and the legacies of enslavement – not to mention the ways in which religion has been used to justify oppression and Read more…
Today marks the 125th anniversary of the chapel at Richmond Hill. The beautiful sanctuary was built in 1894 during the Jim Crow era, a time of legally sanctioned racial segregation, terror and violence in the United States. The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument that was put on nearby Libby Hill around same time was intended to be a dramatic symbol of the south’s intent to rise again following its defeat in the Civil War. The Read more…
Click video to listen to the song. I wish I knew howIt would feel to be freeI wish I could breakAll the chains holding meI wish I could sayAll the things that I should saySay ’em loud, say ’em clearFor the whole round world to hear . . .
Click the video to listen to the song! I’ve got a babe but shall I keep him‘Twill come the day when I’ll be weepin’But how can I love him any lessThis little babe upon my breastYou can take my bodyYou can take my bonesYou can take my bloodBut not my soul . . . From Rhiannon Giddens in an interview on NPR with Michel Martin in April 2018 I’ll play the other song that was Read more…
Here is a summary from archaeologist Tim Roberts of Cultural Resource Analysts of what he and his colleague Nick Arnhold found today from their shovel tests! Let us know what comments or questions you have for the archaeologists! Another exciting day of shovel testing at Richmond Hill! We collected some GPS points and excavated one test along the transect we laid in yesterday and one in the path of the new walkway. The transect test Read more…
We had a great first dig! This from archaeologist Tim Roberts from Cultural Resource Analysts: “This morning we excavated one square, 50-x-50-centimeter-wide shovel test pit about 15 meters northeast of the slave house, careful to stay out of the beautiful garden plots. While we didn’t identify any archaeological features, we did recover a range of artifacts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and maybe a few quartzite flakes from pre-colonial stone tool-making, all from within Read more…
Archeologist Tim Roberts discusses choices made by enslaved people during our first dig at the slave house at Richmond Hill.
