The Richmond Slave Trail Commission has unveiled a vision for a $100 million to $150 million heritage site in Shockoe Bottom (the historical site of Richmond’s slave market).

According to the story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch the plan includes both a slavery museum and glass pavilion covering the Lumpkin Jail archaeological site.

In a commentary on the proposal, columnist Michael Paul Williams writes, “Richmond, which has stopped running and hiding from a fundamental facet of its history, is poised to give birth to a slavery museum…”

Hope in the Cities has been represented on the Commission since its inception and has been active in helping to move this project forward for many years, in particular the Reconciliation Triangle mentioned in the article. Lumpkin’s Jail was one of the sites that received official acknowledgment for the first time at the Healing the Heart of America conference sponsored by Hope in the Cities in 1993.

Chris Rice, the co-director of the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School, headlines his blog: Richmond, Virginia: America's Unlikely Capital of Racial Healing