Friend,

The project began with a simple question: “What can we do?”

After the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, the nation was shocked and protests abounded. During this time of turmoil, three men in Richmond, Virginia, wanted to answer the question of how to create social justice change and expose the suffering Black people in their city had endured since before the Civil War.

Within six months, they had found a solution, creating Hidden in Plain Site (HIPS). This multimedia tour, which uses virtual reality and augmented audiovisual technology, exposes the invisible history and centuries-long suffering of Black people in Richmond.

Seeking to uncover Richmond’s long-buried secrets about racial injustice, Dontrese Brown, Dean Browell and David Waltenbaugh scoured the city to find places like Lumpkin’s Jail – the epicenter of one of the main slave-trading hubs in the U.S – where enslaved people were held for purchase in the 1800s.

But where the jail once stood, they found only a patch of grass and overpasses where Interstate 95 is suspended above parking lots. Three weathered interpretive signs reminding the public of the jail’s presence leave little indication of the pain and sorrow that took place here.

“It was the most horrific place you could ever imagine,” Brown said. “This wasn’t a place like a jail. This was a place where slaves were kept until they actually walked to the market where they were sold or hanged. Under the overpass, if they were hanged, they were hanged right there, in Richmond’s ‘Burial Ground for Negroes.’”

The men were shocked to discover that this site had been hidden from the city. Thousands of vehicles drive over I-95 each day. Pedestrians walk through the parking lot without ever knowing they are quite literally passing by a long-forgotten cemetery.

But there was more.

Richmond – a city known for its infamous Monument Avenue, which once hosted the largest number of Confederate monuments in the country – had erased other sites that spoke to the Black experience, including happier ones like Jackson Ward – the Harlem of the South.

Through their project, Brown, Browell and Waltenbaugh have virtually brought history back to life.

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Sincerely,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center