What was urban slavery?
When most people think of slavery, they think of large rural plantations, however 10-20% of all enslaved people labored in cities like Richmond, in every part of the economy, according to Leslie Harris of Emory University. They worked as domestics in homes, taverns and hotels and were hired out as industrial workers; they toiled in shipyards loading and unloading goods onto ships and traveled back and forth between rural and urban areas transporting goods. They worked in brickmaking factories. The local government used enslaved laborers to repair roads and city buildings.
“Through their forced labor, enslaved African Americans played a major role in shaping the physical appearance and moral structure of Richmond long before it was incorporated as a city in 1782,” write Selden Richardson and Maurice Duke ,“[They] furnished much of the unskilled labor that dug Richmond’s canals, constructed buildings and manned the growing number of heavy industries clustered along the banks of the James River.” Built by Blacks: African-American Architecture and Neighborhoods in Richmond.
According to Midori Takagi, many of the enslaved were highly skilled, “Richmond slaves were not ordinary field hands, but craftsmen, iron-makers, blacksmiths, tailors, and tobacco processors… Slave labor made tobacco manufacturing a multimillion ¬dollar industry by 1860 and greatly contributed to the growth of a range of other industries.” Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond, Virginia, 1782-1865.
In urban environments, the rhythm of work was not controlled by the agricultural calendar. For instance, at the shipyards, they worked when the ships came in and when they needed loading. In the household, the work was constant and always under the owner’s beck and call: marketing, fetching water, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, maintaining fires, hauling wood shoveling coal, sweeping hearths, and caring for children. This is this work that enslaved women like Judy did.
There was a lot more geographic mobility among blacks in urban communities. They could move around more freely, though they still needed a pass and permission to go where they were going. Many people enslaved in cities lived in separate areas from their owners, explained Daina Ramey Berry of the University of Texas at. Austin in an American History TV interview. On larger plantations, the enslaved lived in “quarters.” Richmond had a tenement community where enslaved and free blacks lived together near Shockoe Bottom.
Generally, there was more mixing between free blacks, enslaved blacks, and free white peoples in urban areas. “They’re working side by side, so enslaved people are hearing about things about the anti-slavery movement, they’re learning about the Nat Turner rebellion, they have people maybe near them who are literate who might read them pamphlets or things. They’re interacting with people that have traveled all over the world, some of them have come from different places… so that does have that an influence on their attitude, and particularly those who have been transported back to a rural plantation, they’re bringing all of that knowledge with them,” explained Berry.
With the advent of the Civil War, people in bondage responded in a variety of ways in Richmond as elsewhere in the south. Some were forced to support the Confederacy, working on farms and in factories and households. Some took advantage of the war to gain some autonomy for their families. Thousands escaped to the Union army’s lines, forcing the United States to develop a uniform policy regarding emancipation. In Richmond, near war’s end, some like Judy, who watched from the “high porch” of the Adams-Taylor house on Richmond Hill, were amazed to see the Union troops march into the city and force surrender.