This coming Saturday night, the Flying Brick is inviting folks over at 8 pm for a free showing of the documentary video, “Meet Me In The Bottom”, which is about the controversy with Virginia Commonwealth University over slave history and the burial ground in Shockoe Bottom. Of course, Oregon Hill has had past controversy in the same vein.
Here’s a short blurb about the documentary:
The Burial Ground for Negroes (ca. 1750-1816) is located north of Broad Street, between 15th and 16th Streets. It is the oldest municipal cemetery for enslaved and free Blacks known to exist in the Richmond area. An 1810 map shows the Negro Burial Ground near Broad Street and Shockoe Creek. Today the Burial Ground for Negroes sits adjacent to a parking lot owned by Virginia Commonwealth University. In fact, there are questions as to whether the Burial Ground lies beneath the parking lot. Activist and other groups have protested what is seen by many as a desecration of sacred ground. This documentary tells the story of the community’s efforts to reclaim the Burial Ground as the final resting place of their ancestors.
