Legacies Links for March 31, 2025: Local Histories Matter

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Historic photo (circa 1861) of "Price, Birch & Co. Dealers in Slaves," a three-story brick building with several U.S. soldiers on guard duty.
1315 Duke Street in Alexandria, VA, was the site of a notorious slave pen from the 1830s until the city’s occupation by U.S. troops in 1861. Source: City of Alexandria, VA
  • Ishaan Barrett, “Urban Slavery in Alexandria, Virginia: A Corpus of Critical Urban Historical Sites in Alexandria Today,” Urban Equity Institute (March 24, 2025): LINK. An exemplary urban survey of “sites of slavery, imprisonment, and Atlantic slave trade in Alexandria, Virginia. It touches sites in the city along the waterfront, within the urban fabric of the city, as well as on the periphery of Alexandria.”
  • Dominique Ellis Falcon, “$257,000 Awarded to Preserve and Further African American History on the Chester River,” Washington College (March 24, 2025): LINK. Two grants from the National Trust for Historic Preservation will help CIC member Washington College preserve the 1746 Custom House in Chestertown, MD—the former home of a mid-18th century slave trader.
  • Victoria Moorwood and Randy Tucker, “Newport’s founder left slaves at least $1.7M in today’s dollars. Can descendants collect?” Cincinnati Enquirer (March 24, 2025): LINK. In 1848, Gen. James Taylor V, the founder of Newport, Kentucky, bequeathed more than 1,500 acres to about 50 enslaved people on his estate—but neither those enslaved people nor their descendants ever received the land or money in compensation.
  • Carol Brooks, “Never-enslaved people from Jamestown [North Carolina] helped in emancipation,” Yes Weekly (March 26, 2025): LINK. Free Black families supported the abolitionist movement by establishing Black townships in antebellum Indiana and Ohio. (Based on a presentation by retired sociologist Kerstein Priest, who previously conducted research on pioneer Black settlers in the region with her students at CIC member Taylor University [IN].)
  • Dominic Davies, “Three graphic novels that address the history of slavery—and commemorate resistance,” The Conversation (March 24, 2025): LINK. Three recent graphic novels help tell the story of resistance to slavery: Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History (Verso Books, 2023); Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel (Verso Books, 2023); Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, A Graphic Novel (Verso Books, 2023).