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Untold and Overlooked: Remembering the Stories of Jefferson's Poplar Forest Slaves

Jordy Yager

This past weekend, Poplar Forest paid tribute to the lives and stories of the 95 African-Americans enslaved by Thomas Jefferson there, and the legacies they left behind. At the center of it all was Joseph McGill, founder of the Slave Dwelling Project. Jordy Yager has this report.

The sun is nearly set behind the Blue Ridge Mountains, and Joseph McGill has joined about 75 people gathered on the lawn outside Thomas Jefferson’s house at Poplar Forest. Before them, two actors are performing a scene that’s never before been told:

A character named Billy turns to his mother Hannah and says, “I love you. And I respect your place here on this plantation. I know you doing what you feel is the right thing to do. But I refuse to be made to feel that I be less than a man. I can’t do it. Not for you, not for no one. I’d rather be dead than to let that happen.”

His mother, Hannah, replies, “Where in the world do you be getting these vile thoughts from Billy? Can you not see, you ain’t get a choice. Your choice was taken away from you long before you were born.”

The scene is one of three vignettes written and directed by area playwright Teresa Harris. The characters were drawn from the historical findings of archeologists and preservationists at Poplar Forest. They’ve been carefully curating as many details as they can about the 95 African-American men, women, and children enslaved by Jefferson in the 19th century.

Billy and Hannah? They were real people.

"The program that we did here, I guarantee you there's a segment of our audience that would be turned off by it. But the flip side is there's a new audience that we need to reach, that is energized by it, and hopefully then will come to see Poplar Forest as part of their heritage too."

For nearly 200 years, these stories and others have largely gone untold; intentionally overlooked. And that’s where Joseph McGill comes in.

Seven years ago he started a non-profit called the Slave Dwelling Project. The idea is simple, he says. With sleeping bag in hand, he goes around the country sleeping where slaves slept.

It’s the ‘why’ that’s more complex. 

“It’s because of a void that’s in our history,” says McGill. “We as preservationists tend to preserve those buildings that are iconic, architecturally significant, the house on the hill. But when these buildings apply to ante-bellum buildings, there’s usually some type of slavery involved in either the physical building of those buildings or the labor that provided the wealth for those houses to be built. Or there are also buildings that once housed the enslaved. These are the places that we concentrate on less, but they still exist.”

And McGill’s on a mission to remind people of that. He’s spent the night at nearly 100 homes of the formerly enslaved. From falling down discarded cabins to giant imposing antebellum mansions, McGill’s project has brought him to 19 states throughout the country—7 in the north. 

This weekend, he was invited to come to what’s known as Jefferson’s second home: Poplar Forest.

As the crowd from the play headed home and darkness set in for the night, one by one a group of about 14 made their way from the big house down through a clearing in the woods, to a bare-bones reconstructed former slave cabin. It’s called a ghost structure. There, Jerome Bias was making a fire.

Bias is part of a program called Inalienable Rights: Through the Eyes of the Enslaved. It’s a small group of African-American re-enactors: a blacksmith, a quilter, a brick maker, a cook, all geared towards educating the public about the lives of the enslaved.

In the morning Bias will use period pots and utensils to make grits, eggs, and biscuits for the group. But right now, everyone’s sitting around the fire, delving into the real meat of the weekend: race, slavery, and the legacy it left behind.

“So do you get any push back from folks that say you talk about slavery too much?” McGill asks Liz Marshall, a tour guide at Monticello who is at Poplar Forest for the overnight.

“Yes,” Marshall replies.

“They get that here too,” says Laura Macaluso, a historian and author, who is married to the president and CEO of Poplar Forest.

Wayne Gannaway, director of programs and marketing for Poplar Forest agrees. He refers to the play from earlier in the evening.

“The program that we did here, I guarantee you there’s a segment of our audience that would be turned off by it,” says Gannaway. “But the flip side is there’s a new audience that we need to reach, that is energized by it, and hopefully then will come to see Poplar Forest as part of their heritage too.”

McGill doesn’t want to do away with Jefferson’s history. He just wants to contextualize it. Jefferson was flawed and a man of his times. He never would’ve been able to accomplish what he did if he didn’t enslave African-Americans. The same African-Americans who were people’s mothers and grandmothers. They deserve to be honored too, McGill says.

It’s sort of like the monuments to 19th century civil war figures, like Robert E. Lee, that are in various stages of being taken down in New Orleans and even closer, Charlottesville. McGill thinks they should remain standing. To remove them, he said, is taking the easy way out.

“Yes it is. It’s giving them a pass, why give them a pass in allowing them to forget?” says McGill.

Instead, we should use the statues as tools to have deeper conversations.

Our conversation lasts well over two hours, and with archeologists, journalists, historians, and re-enactors all seated around the fire, it’s wide-ranging, at many times deeply personal. 

Christine Mitchell is a part of the Inalienable Rights program. She’s an historical interpreter at the Old Slave Mart in Charleston, South Carolina.

There, she gives a tour entitled: slavery, freedom and beyond. Liz Marshall from Monticello asks Mitchell, what’s our beyond?

“Our beyond is changing the hearts, is our hearts changing, that’s [an] individual connection. Hearts change before the laws can change, and the hearts are changing,” says Mitchell.

McGill offers his take. “I think our beyond is this, our beyond is us sitting around right now having this discussion,” he says.

“Yes, this is our beyond,” agrees Mitchell. “Absolutely.”

"Even if those monuments are removed, is that going to change somebody's heart? I don't know. But it certainly affords us the opportunity to have more in depth discussions about these individuals, who these monuments represent."

“Our beyond also is what’s going on right now in New Orleans and Charlottesville, the fact that there’s so much controversy involved in whether these monuments should stay or whether they should go,” says McGill. “But it goes back to Christine’s point, even if those monuments are removed, is that going to change somebody’s heart? I don’t know. But it certainly affords us the opportunity to have more in depth discussions about these individuals, who these monuments represent.”

And more discussions are in the works. In the coming weeks and months McGill is headed to homes of the enslaved in New York, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Maryland, and back to Virginia several times.

In the fall he’s hosting the 4th annual Slave Dwelling Project conference. For the first time it’s at the University of Virginia, drawing dozens of scholars, historians, and experts for a 3-day symposium on the effects of slavery.

As the minutes turn to hours around the camp fire, someone realizes it’s past midnight, with sunrise less than six hours away. And so with flashlights forging ahead, the group makes its way back to the big house.

We venture into the basement, beneath Jefferson’s old bedroom, where the enslaved families lived. Sleeping bags get laid out over the hard floor, where enslaved families laid the bricks that they themselves made. And one by one, each person drifts off to sleep, the one space where enslaved families could have dreamed of a night like this. 

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.