Richmond, Virginia – A History Lesson
September 2026
I visit Richmond expecting one large history lesson rather than separate attractions. How closely do power, economics, race, government, religion, memory, and the physical landscape connect.
Historic Richmond with its brick and cobble streets and facades couldn’t look lovelier. However, under the surface and historically, Richmond proves slavery and the Confederacy were not abstract ideas.
Each represented systems built into a real city and its businesses, government, streets, cemeteries, banks, churches, warehouses, railroads, and people’s lives. So, I explore Richmond and keep asking: Who had power here? Who benefited? Who suffered? And what happened to those systems after slavery ended? There are always lessons to learn. My goal becomes not simply to understand Richmond as the Capital of the Confederacy, but as a city where enslavement, resistance, religion, medicine, the Civil War, and confederate history all intersected.
After Washington, D.C., Richmond becomes particularly meaningful because it moves me from the museum interpretation seen in D.C. into the actual heart of the Confederacy.
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