Qualla: Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground

Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 2nd ABG, CC BY-SA 4.0. An old Sunoco station sits on part of it. A billboard advertises VCU Health. Four-lane Interstate 64 cuts across the rest. There is nothing on the surface of this corner at Fifth and Hospital Streets to tell you that more than twenty-two thousand people are buried beneath your feet - making this likely the largest burial ground of free Black people and enslaved Africans in the United States. The grave markers were removed. The land was sold off. The maps stopped showing it. For more than a century, the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground was, by design, invisible. A descendant named Lenora McQueen would not let it stay that way.

Image: 2nd ABG | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground: Twenty-Two Thousand People

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 2nd ABG, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground opened in February 1816 as a replacement for the older, overcrowded Burial Ground for Negroes down in Shockoe Bottom. The city designated two adjacent one-acre plots at the northeastern corner of Fifth and Hospital Streets - one labeled 'Bu...

Image: 2nd ABG | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground: The People Buried Here

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 2nd ABG, CC BY-SA 4.0. These were Richmonders. Domestic workers in the houses on Shockoe Hill. Iron workers at the Tredegar foundry. Dock laborers at the falls of the James. Cooks and seamstresses and bricklayers and washerwomen. Free Black tradespeople who built and ran their own businesses despite Vi...

Image: 2nd ABG | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground: Body Snatchers and Powder Magazines

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 2nd ABG, CC BY-SA 4.0. Even during its active years the burial ground was treated with the contempt of its era. Body snatchers worked it for the Medical College of Virginia and the University of Virginia, who needed cadavers for anatomy classes and considered Black graves the safest source. On April 3,...

Image: 2nd ABG | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground: Lenora McQueen

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 2nd ABG, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2017 Lenora McQueen, a Texas resident researching her family's Richmond roots, discovered that her own ancestors were buried in the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground. She traveled to Richmond expecting a cemetery. She found a parking lot, a gas station, and a billboard. What...

Image: 2nd ABG | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground: Still Threatened, Still Sacred

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 2nd ABG, CC BY-SA 4.0. The burying ground is recognized now, but it is not safe. The DC2RVA passenger rail project would route high-speed rail through it. The proposed Commonwealth Corridor east-west rail link would cross it. The widening of Interstate 64 threatens more of it. In early 2022, undergroun...

Image: 2nd ABG | CC BY-SA 4.0