Virginia Union University, Richmond
The area now houses a black seminary that is now known as Virginia Union University, a historically black university. Robert Lumpkin’s infamous slave jail in Richmond is the exact site for the new constructions. Richmond was once the second largest centre of slave trade in the US. It is estimated that about 350,000 people were sold into slavery between 1850-1865 at Shockoe Bottom, an eight-block area downtown Richmond, Virginia. There are no slave market or jails standing in Shockoe Bottom anymore. Many of the slave markets were converted into factories for Richmond’s Tobacco industry after the Civil War. Road networks constructed in the area have further buried signs of any existence of its slave markets.
