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August 2021 – Didja Know? Slavery in Richmond

DID YA KNOW:

There are fifty-six documented businesses related to Richmond’s slave trade located near the James River and primarily scattered throughout Shockoe Creek’s “Bottom ‘’  The sources for this data range from 1852 to 1864 and was published in the Richmond Times Dispatch (02/24/2014).  Robert Lumpkin, Silas Omohundro and Bacon Tait were reputed to be the three major slave jail operators in the city, located in the 15th Street Corridor and bound by Broad Street and Cary.[1]

Robert Lumpkin’s Jail is the one most well known to modern Richmond’s citizens due to the on-going archaeological preservation efforts.  Its history goes back to 1844 when Robert Lumpkin purchased three lots on a narrow lane, Wall Street (15th St), between Franklin and Broad.   There were four brick buildings located on the property.  One was used as the proprietor’s residence and office.  Another was used as a boarding-house for slave traders.  The third served as a bar-room and kitchen.  The “old jail” stood in a field some distance away from the others.  It was forty-one feet long and two stories in height, with a piazza to both stories on the north side of the building.  It was here that men and women were lodged until they were “disposed of” at private or public auction. [2]  One of Lumpkin’s more well-known captives, Anthony Burns, was held for four months prior to his sale to a North Carolina planter.[3]

“A portion of it (Lumpkin’s) was used as a temporary receptacle of political prisoners.”[4] Outspoken citizens were arrested and confined by the Richmond’s Confederate Administration during the Civil War.   “A former U.S. Congressman, John Minor Botts spent two months on the second floor of Lumpkin’s slave jail with a view through its barred windows of factories in Shockoe Bottom that would not survive the fire.”[5]   Other Unionists that stood their ground and paid the price were Franklin Stearns, Burnham Wardwell, G. W. Frosst and Charles Palmer.  In an article on March 3, 1862, the Richmond Dispatch noted among others, the arrest of Rev. A. Bosserman, pastor of the First Independent Christian Church, Mayo Street.

McDaniel’s, another slave jail located in the 15th Street Corridor, was renamed “Castle Godwin” and described as a “secure retreat for Unionists and politically dyspeptic characters from other portions of the state.”  The Richmond Dispatch (04/03/1862) lists Rev. Bosserman among Castle Godwin’s prisoners charged with treason.

Pat Vaughn
[1] Kambourian, Elizabeth, “Slave traders in Richmond”  Richmond Times Dispatch,March24, 2014
http://www.richmond.com: Richmond, VA., News

[2] Dispatches from the Virginia Newspaper Project @ The Library of Virginia
http://www.virginiamemory.com/blogs/fittoprint/2014/12/15/my-heart-went-right-down-the-devils-half-acre-and-the-richmond-slave-trade/

[3] Kimball, Gregg D., “American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond,” University of Georgia Press, 2000, p78

[4] Corresponding Sec’y Virginia Historical Society, “Richmond:Manufacturing and Trading Center, Including a Historical Sketch of the City” Published by Jones & Cook 1880, Chapter “ Negro Jails and Auction Houses”

[5] Lankford, Nelson, “Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate Capitol” Viking Penguin 2002, p245

March 2021 – Didja Know (2) – Our Man in the Statehouse

DIDJA’ KNOW                     “OUR MAN IN THE STATE HOUSE”

During the months leading into the Civil War, it became obvious that the exceptional prosperity, that Richmond had enjoyed, was disappearing under the strain of the political situation.  Manufactories began to close down, throwing hundreds out of work as business and trade activity slowed and the banks suspended specie payment. The city’s streets were filled with its own unemployed and multiplied by large numbers of vagrants from the North.

Wyndham Robertson is listed as one of the founding members of the First Independent Christian Church of Richmond.  His family descended through the old Virginia planter aristocracy, educated and expected to serve in political office.  Robertson was elected Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia on March 31, 1836 and when Governor Tazewell resigned, he became Governor of Virginia until the term ended in 1837.   He continued to serve in the Virginia House of Delegates and was a member of the Convention, as they debated the issues concerning secession.  Robertson referred to himself as a “friend to peace and the Union” and he opposed South Carolina’s call for a Southern Convention in 1859.  After South Carolina and several other states seceded in the winter of 1860 and ’61, he continued to advocate that Virginia stand firm with the Union.

The weather was bitterly cold and starvation threatened Richmond’s citizenry to the degree that subscriptions had to be initiated to supply them with food.  The situation throughout the whole state became so grave that the Governor designated January 4th (1861) as a day of fasting and prayer and the Legislature was called into session.

As the political controversy became more critical, Robertson’s resolution, (Jan 07, 1861) known as the “Anti-Coercion Resolution” was adopted.  Secession was to be rejected with the stipulation that, if the Federal Government used coercion against the seceded states, Virginia would join the fight.   On the morning of Friday, April 12, 1861, the Convention was called to order at 10 o’clock, with a prayer by the Rev. Mr. Bosserman of the Universalist Church, to continue the debate.  President Lincoln called for troops on April 15, 1861 and Virginia seceded.   Once secession was affected Wyndham Robertson, dedicated to the defense of his state, continued to serve in his elected office.

As a footnote:  During Reconstruction, Wyndham Robertson served on the Committee of Nine, led by Alexander H.H. Stuart, seeking to fulfill the requirements for Virginia’s readmission to the Union.

Pat Vaughn

 

March 2021 Didja Know?! – by Pat Vaughn

DID YA KNOW: MARCH IS A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN’S CONTRIBUTIONS FOR A BETTER WORLD?

Historically, generations of women have been taught they must accept male domination over their bodies and their lives.  It began in the 4th Century, as Christian tenants of belief were being reinterpreted to accommodate the power of Rome in exchange for positions of influence.  Christian moralists redefined the Genesis myth to portray women as the source of temptation and evil, reinforcing male domination, in spite of fellow theologians that continued to proclaim that the Christian gospels were a message of freedom.  Gnostic teachings were eventually suppressed and orthodox churches became more rigidly institutionalized eventually leading to civil laws that defined women and children as the ‘property’ of a husband or a male member of her family.  For many women around the world this is still their way of life.
During the Revolutionary Period, educating women meant educating ‘mothers’ with enough basic training to nurture the minds and bodies of (male) future citizens and leaders.  Equity Law, which developed in England during the 19th century, had a liberalizing effect upon the legal rights of women in the United States.  Unions were organized to create coalitions of laboring members, enabling them to bargain for better working conditions, higher pay and limits on working hours.  Hard-won initiatives, passed at the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, gradually developed into legislation that allowed women to own property, upheld their rights to privacy, gave them access to equal consideration under the law and opened the doors to educational and career opportunities.
Women had been excluded from the professions because they could not gain entry into secondary institutions for education.  Most colleges hired only male faculty, there were no women’s courses of study and very few role models. ‘Experts’ claimed that females were incapable of higher learning due to their intellectual and moral weakness.  Women’s refusal to accept the traditions of single-sex educational elitism became the driving force behind the building and success of women’s colleges in the United States.  When American women gained the right to vote, in 1920, the door opened for entry into the political arena and legislation was enacted, in 1979, prohibiting gender discrimination by federally funded institutions.
In 1978, a movement began in Sonoma, California with a “Women’s History Week” celebration.  Three years later, Congress passed a resolution establishing a ‘National Women’s History Week” that expanded into the entire month of March.  This event provides the opportunity to recognize and honor the contributions of women to our society, to our culture and to our country.
Today, women are elected as representatives for state and national office.  They hold positions as advisors and international ambassadors.  They are members of the Presidential cabinet, the court system and are found in all levels of military service.  Women participate in social action, education and religious reform movements.  They take their places in the science labs, on the athletic fields, and even in outer space.  Traditional views of women and their role in society will continue to evolve as the next generation speaks out for a better world in the 21st Century.  “The Work Goes On.”

For additional reading: “Women’s History Month” at httn://nwhp.org/whm/honorees2012.php
and “Unitarian Universalist Women in Times of War and Peace” at www.uua.org

Pat Vaughn  03/2021

October Didja Know?! by Pat Vaughn

DIDJA KNOW??  By Pat Vaughn

     John Budd Pitkin was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts January 24, 1803.  William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born, February 23, 1868, a free African American in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  Both grew up in a fatherless home, raised by their mothers with the assistance of grandparents. Both were recognized as above average students with exceptional abilities.  Both attended the First Congregationalist Church of Great Barrington but it is here that the common path of John Budd Pitkin and W. E. B. Du Bois separates. William’s mixed African American/white heritage descended through Dutch, African and English ancestors on their path to freedom.  John descended from the 14th Century Pitcairnes of Warwood Castle, Northumberland, England.
    John was encouraged by Rev. Wheeler to accept excessive leadership responsibilities for his age.  He attended four academies for short periods, returning to his mother’s home suffering from exhaustion and the ever present threat of consumption.  He was never able to graduate and a sense of failure may have been the cause of his erratic actions that resulted in his censure by the church leadership.  John was deeply wounded by what he believed to be an injustice and left to take a teaching position in Maryland. It was in Baltimore that John met Otis Skinner and was introduced to the tenants of Universalism, going on to become a minister for the faith. When John was called, in 1830, to fill the pulpit for the first Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond, he found acceptance: his leadership and dedication valued by his congregation.  In 1835, Rev. Pitkin died from the chronic lung disorder that had been his lifetime plague. He was not yet 33 years old.
     William was part of a racial minority in the village and attended the small integrated public school.  His scholastic ability was recognized and encouraged in Great Barrington. When he was old enough to attend college, the First Congregational Church provided assistance toward his tuition.  He went on to graduate from three great institutions of learning: Fisk University, Harvard University and the University of Berlin. His accomplishments in the academic field and civil rights would require more space than I have here: notably Author, Professor, Founder of the Niagara Movement, Social Activist, Research Director for the NAACP and editor of its magazine, The Crisis.
      I must admit that when my research into Du Bois’ religious background, coming out of New England Congregationalism, revealed him to be a “pragmatic religious naturalist,” it caught me by surprise.  Author Jonathon S. Kahn, in his book Divine Discontent, the Religious Imagination of Du Bois, compares his anti-metaphysical viewpoint in the sphere of religious naturalism as typified by William James, George Santayana and John Dewey.  In W.E.B. Du Bois, American Prophet, author Edward J. Blum writes, “W.E.B. Du Bois is shown to be thoughtful and creative on topics of religion, to possess a religious ingenuity rarely recognized.  But he is not, in the comparative historical sense, religious. He was a church reformer who rarely attended church. He was priest with no church, a prophet who presented his works as history, sociology and fiction.”
    By 1961, Du Bois had become completely disillusioned with the lack of progress in the United States and chose exile in Accra, Ghana, where he died in 1963 at the age 95.
     The sixty-five years that separated their birth(s) encompassed major paradigm changes in scientific and industrial development as well as social and religious thought, all of which affected how these men perceived life and were regarded by the world they lived in.

SEPTEMBER: Didja Know?! by Pat Vaughn

DID JA KNOW….. The founding members of the Unitarian Universalist Church came from an active meld of the Richmond community.  Businessmen, politicians, craftsmen and members of the militia and medical profession joined to foster the efforts of liberal Christians, who believed that two separate religious denominations could co-exist and co-operate for the greater good of their membership.  They held committee meetings in the privacy of their homes and public rooms were rented for larger events. Newspapers and handbills were used to advertise out-of-town speakers.
   By the time Rev. Dods had left Richmond the church membership was eager to create a place of worship that suited their needs.    On May 22, 1832 four lots on Mayo Street were purchased and a prominent Richmond architect, Otis Manson, was contracted to construct their church.  The members of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Richmond, Virginia dedicated their new building, as the First Independent Christian Church of Richmond, on January 1833.   Their first pastor, John B. Pitkin, was ordained by Rev.  Mr. Bernard Whitman, a Unitarian, and the Rev. Otis A. Skinner, a Universalist; this cooperation of clergy from two denominations was one of the first of its kind to be recorded.
    Within a year, Rev. Pitkin reported that, “the church was in a healthy and flourishing condition.  Local prejudice was giving way, ladies attended services and members of the House of Delegates were among his listeners and personal friends.”  Pitkin was able to establish a mission in Powhatan and traveled to other parts of Virginia to fill vacant pulpits. 
  As his congregation grew, Pitkin’s ministry did not go unnoticed or unchallenged by the local orthodox community.   In his letters to his mother, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, he describes the bigotry and corruption that he has observed in some of the city’s churches and the effects of their attacks upon his congregation; looked upon as deviationists, not Christian.   He recognizes that some among his membership hold to a diversity of faulty beliefs but he remains optimistic that he has the ability to “bring them to Christian truth, feeling and practice.”    
    The 1820s and 1830s were years of intense conflict between Unitarian and Universalist leaders.
 W. S. Balch, editor of the “Impartialist” (Universalist), printed the account of the first joint Unitarian Universalist ordination on record and expressed the hope that such interdenominational good fellowship would someday exist also in New England.   

Pat Vaughn

JUNE: Didja Know?! by Pat Vaughn

DID JA KNOW

  Johannes Dods Bovee (1795 – 1872) was born in the town of Florida, Montgomery County, New York.  He was the son of Jacob Mathias Bovee, a farmer and merchant, and Jane Dods. Cared for and educated by a maternal uncle, after his father’s untimely death, he took Dods as his surname.  He served in the War of 1812 then chose to pursue a profession in the ministry.
  In 1824, Dods served as Congregational minister in the town of Levant, Maine before becoming a Universalist in 1826.  From his pulpit, Rev. Dods defended the liberal theology, preaching a message of gradual spiritual growth and universal salvation.  He also expressed an interest in spiritualism, a fad that had become popular among the Universalist clergy.
   Responding to a call from Richmond, Rev. Dods arrived in Richmond in the mid-summer of 1830.  He was pleased to find a thriving city; the new State Library had opened, transportation projects were being considered and a water pumping station was under construction.
   Rev. Dods spent ten weeks in the city and under his leadership, forty-two men committed to the establishment of the first Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond.  About town, it became known in popular jargon as the Uni-Uni Church.  In her book, “Old Richmond Neighborhoods,” Mary Wingfield Scott refers its members as “young intellectuals”.  The city’s orthodox clergy, not so forbearing, described them as synonymous with heresy, deviationists and a front for New England abolitionists.
   The first theological merger of the two societies is evidence that the membership recognized the compatibility of Unitarianism and Universalism.  Historian, Will Frank said, “In 1830 – The Unitarian Universalist Society of Richmond formed the first liberal church in the state and the first joint denominational society in the nation.”  It would be another one hundred and thirty- one years before a formal union of the Unitarians and Universalists occurred again.
   Dods was urged by the members to remain in Richmond and serve as minister for the new church but he refused, recommending Rev. John Budd Pitkin to fill the position.  In the autumn of 1830 the society contracted Pitkin, currently residing in Baltimore, and asked him to come to Richmond.
   Rev. Dods returned to New England after completing his mission work in the south.  

Pat Vaughn

RISC – A Celebration!

RISC is Celebrating – and you are invited!

 

June 24. 6:30 pm at Bon Air Presbyterian Church. We are rewarding ourselves and celebrating a productive year of doing justice in RVA.

Why Celebrate?
Reason 1: Our church brought 70 people to the Nehemiah ACTION on May 2. The third most of all congregations. Well done! Let’s Celebrate.

Reason 2: The city is on its way to addressing the eviction crisis that has been in the national headlines since last year. The city’s budget now includes the best practices that RISC’s Housing Research Committee identified: $2.9 million for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and $485,000 for an Eviction Diversion Program (based on proven programs in other cities). Well Done! Let’s Celebrate.

Reason 3: Just in the past year, RPS has implemented the best practices curriculum, SRA Reading Mastery in 8 schools. Affecting the reading progress of over 2000 of our students. And this month RPS and RISC are co-sponsoring a Reading Mastery Forum where RPS teachers, principals and reading specialists will hear from educators and principals from school district in Virginia that have successfully implemented Reading Mastery. Well Done! Let’s Celebrate.

 

Reason 4: Previously – four years of a successful (albeit up to now underfunded) Affordable Housing Trust Fund created affordable housing for 3,915 family, seniors and formerly homeless. Well Done! Let’s Celebrate.

 

Want more information? Contact Steve Saltzberg at 804-306-5184 or Dorothy Hollahan at 804-744-9412.

Persistence – RISC and the Nehemiah Action

The church’s theme of the month is persistence and it comes at the perfect moment to recount the RISC justice victories that we saw at the Nehemiah ACTION on May 2, attended by about 1000 citizens (60 from our church.)

This year RISC took on lack of affordable housing and the city’s eviction crisis. From months of research we identified the issues, the best practices and the implementation problems with each of them.

We realized that a significant problem was that renters’ leases did not protect the renter from any short term ‘hickup’ (health, car breakdown, job transition) in their ability to pay rent. Though there were local efforts to help, research revealed two powerful best practices:  increase the stock of affordable housing in the city and provide a better way to support those in jeopardy of eviction.

 

And those best practices came with Mayor Stoney’s proposed city budget: $2.9 million for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and $485,000 for an Eviction Diversion Program (based on proven programs in other cities). While RISC was careful to stay out of the budget/tax battle between the Mayor and the City Council, during that battle several council members threatened to cut housing and eviction diversion funding.  We needed PERSISTENCE.

 

RISC members met with Council members and came to the Council’s April 22 budget meeting, where over a dozen RISC members spoke with passion and with data in support of these items. We were told that our comments helped to catalyze Council members to assure their approval. PERSISTENCE.

 

And at the Nehemiah ACTION on May 2 we again spoke with passion and facts and the Council members either came to show their support or wrote letters in support. You can see the letters at the bottom of the RISC webpage: http://www.riscrichmond.org/eviction-action. PERSISTENCE.

 

The other major issue at the Nehemiah ACTION was to address the reading to grade level problem in the Richmond City Schools. At the 2018 Nehemiah ACTION RPS Superintendent Kamras committed to a follow up meeting to consider piloting a proven curriculum for getting students reading to grade level —  Reading Mastery.  Then in June, RPS agreed to pilot the program in the Fall 2018 semester in a couple of schools.  They piloted it in EIGHT! But not with the fidelity that RISC recommended. So at the 2019 ACTION RISC asked RPS to continue the pilot and to improve upon it as well. PERSISTENCE. RISC plans to meet again with the Superintendent and the Chief Academic Officer to move these improvements forward. PERSISTENCE.

One of the ways that RISC succeeds is that we don’t go away. We PERSIST even if it takes years. It is not so much that we are patient; it is more that we don’t take NO for an answer!

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