African Americans and the Waterfront

Richmond’s waterfront has long been central to African American history. From Richmond’s early years as a colonial trading post, free, indentured, and enslaved African Americans lived and worked there. The dock later became a place where many enslaved people brought from other parts of the South arrived to be sold at auction houses nearby. Free and enslaved black workers labored in ironworks and tobacco warehouses along the waterfront and on the river, canals, and docks, and African American batteauxmen were known for their skill and daring in navigating the rocks and rapids of the James River and the canals. Mayo’s Bridge at 14th Street figured in Gabriel’s planned 1800 uprising, in which the enslaved blacksmith recruited hundreds, and possibly thousands, to attack Richmond and demand freedom for all slaves in Virginia, inspired by Revolutionary ideals and the motto “Death or Liberty.” The plan called for some men to secure the bridge and others to set fire to Rockett’s Landing, but a violent storm disrupted it, and Gabriel was betrayed, captured, tried, and hanged at 15th and Broad Streets. The sale of family members also drove resistance to slavery in the case of Henry “Box” Brown, a tobacco warehouse worker at Cary and 14th Streets, who decided to escape after his wife and three children were sold in 1848. With the help of a white shoemaker, Brown had himself packed into a small crate, taken to the depot on Broad Street, and loaded onto a freight car; despite being turned upside down several times and nearly suffocating during the 27-hour trip, he reached an abolitionist address in Philadelphia and later became a well-known anti-slavery activist. After emancipation, the waterfront ceased to be a place of slavery but remained a workplace for generations of African Americans, with railroads replacing the canals as employers of many black men and tobacco warehouses and factories employing black men and women through World War II. In 1999, when the restored canals opened, those present included Douglas Wilder, a descendant of slaves who had served as Virginia’s governor from 1990 to 1994 and was the first elected African American governor in the United States.

Richmond, Virginia · United States