Reconciliation Statue

Identical statues in Liverpool, England; Benin, West Africa; and Richmond, Virginia, memorialize the British, African, and American triangular trade route, now identified as the Reconciliation Triangle. Traders profited from delivering over 114,000 Africans to Virginia between the 1600’s and the American Revolution, and at least 337,800 to other North American places before 1808. The triangle extended between Liverpool and other large British cities, Benin and other West African kingdoms, and Virginia and other North American colonies and states. Profits from the sale of enslaved Africans, from the commodities they produced, and from the benefits of these products in Anglo-American lifestyles financed major British and North American economic development. Richmond’s journey toward racial healing began with its first walk through history, organized by Hope in the Cities and created by the Elegba Folklore Society in 1993 with the marking of the historic Slave Trail. In 1999, President Mathieu Kerek of the republic of Benin convened an international gathering at which he apologized for Benin’s part in selling fellow Africans to slave traders. Also in 1999, Liverpool City Council apologized for that city’s prominent role in the trade. In 2007, Virginia’s General Assembly voted unanimously to express profound regret for the involuntary servitude of Africans and called for reconciliation among all Virginians. The Richmond Slave Trail chronicles the history of the trade in enslaved Africans from their homeland to Virginia until 1778, and away from Virginia, especially Richmond, to other locations in the Americas until 1865. The trail begins at the Manchester Docks, which, alongside Rocketts Landing on the north side of the river, operated as a major port in the downriver slave trade, making Richmond the largest source of enslaved blacks on the east coast of America from 1830 to 1860. It follows the route of those who remained in Richmond, crossed the James River often chained together in a coffle, passed through the slave markets and auction houses, and continued beside the Reconciliation Statue to Lumpkin’s Slave Jail, Richmond’s African Burial Ground, and the First African Baptist Church, a center of African American life in pre-Civil War Richmond.

Richmond, Virginia · United States