As it enters its third century, the University of Virginia remembers the enslaved people whose labor and talents made possible the construction and operation of the Academical Village. Forced labor, incalculable suffering, and the struggle to live with dignity were the daily experience of the enslaved African Americans who shaped the institution's first half-century. In Virginia, slavery was formalized in law in 1705 and expanded in a state that held more enslaved people than any other from 1776 to 1865, even as Jefferson wrote that "All Men Are Created Equal" while holding over 600 African Americans in bondage during his lifetime. Beginning in 1817, enslaved people cleared the land that became UVA, then dug foundations, made bricks, quarried stone, roofed buildings, did carpentry, blacksmithing, cooking, and many other kinds of work, while the university also rented enslaved people from as far as seventy miles away, separating families and forcing long walks. Named individuals including Willis, Warner, Gilbert, Caesar, Abraham, Sam, Roda, William Green, Dick, Ned, Fleming, Henry, Charles, Sally, Davey, Tom, Jim, Moses, Primus, Zebray, Lucy Cottrell, Prudence, Humphrey, Peyton Skipwith, John Edwards, Cato Cocke, Lewis Commodore, Fielding, Flora, Isabella Gibbons, William Gibbons, Joshua, Charlotte, and Aaron lived and labored there, and some ran away, were captured, fell ill, suffered beatings, endured grave robbery and other abuses, married, learned to read and write, taught in freedom, or served in roles ranging from carpenter and blacksmith to cook, seamstress, janitor, gardener, quarry worker, and attendant. When UVA opened in 1825 for 123 white male students, ninety to one hundred fifty enslaved people also lived on the Grounds, and from 1825 to 1865 an average of over one hundred enslaved people worked there annually. Faculty and students repeatedly sought stricter control over enslaved people and inflicted violence on them, while wider events including Nat Turner's uprising, John Brown's raid, Virginia's secession, wartime flight to Union lines, forced Confederate labor, African American religious organizing, Union Army enlistment, and the surrender of Charlottesville and Virginia shaped the path to emancipation. In 1865, with freedom underway and the Civil War over, UVA began paying wages to those formerly enslaved, and in 1866 Isabella Gibbons taught at a freedmen's school in Charlottesville that grew into the Jefferson School. The history is carried through the long record of named people and family ties preserved here and in Isabella Gibbons's 1867 words recalling the whip, auction block, handcuffs, separation of children from mothers, and the hundreds killed by slavery's cruelties.