Sen. Warner Honors Black History Month With Tour Of Old Town

ALEXANDRIA, VA — U.S. Sen. Mark Warner braved the winter weather Monday morning to hear stories of enslaved and freed Black people who worked and lived in the city of Alexandria before the Civil War. The walk, titled “Freedom’s Fight In Alexandria Tour,” was led by Alexandria City Councilman John Chapman, who operates the Manumission Tour Company.

Alexandria has a deep connection to the institution of slavery as home to one of the largest slave-trading operations in the country in the early 1800s. The city also was home to a large community of Black people who fought for their freedom prior to the Civil War.

Warner's office organized the tour as part of an effort to commemorate Black History Month and encourage people to learn more about the history of African Americans in Alexandria and across the state.

“This idea of telling the whole history of Virginia is something I’ve been focused on as long as I’ve been in public service,” Warner said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not more to learn.”

“Some of these stories are the first time I’ve heard them,” said Warner, who has lived in Alexandria for 35 years. “The history of this country, the history of our city, the history of the commonwealth is a lot different than the history I got taught in my schoolbooks back in the 1960s.”

In recent years, Alexandria officials have focused on efforts to end the city's celebration of the Confederacy. The controversial Confederate Appomattox statue was removed last June from its place in Old Town Alexandria by the group that owned it.

Alexandria has worked to remove other Confederate symbols. The city officially renamed Jefferson Davis Highway (Route 1) as Richmond Highway in early 2019. In 2017, the city removed a picture of Robert E. Lee from City Hall.

Warner recalled how as governor he oversaw the establishment of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, including a statue of high school student Barbara Rose Johns, commemorating protests that helped bring about school desegregation in the state. The memorial opened in July 2008 and is located on the grounds of the Virginia State Capitol.

“One of the things I was proudest of was we built the first statue” to celebrate that part of Virginia's history, said Warner, who served as governor from 2002 to 2006.

The tour started outside the Kate Waller Barrett branch of Alexandria Library system that houses the city's special collections section that includes books and documents about the city's history. Chapman, who founded his tour company in 2016, said he conducted extensive research at the library that has allowed him to tell people little-known stories of Africans and African Americans, both enslaved and free, who lived in Old Town Alexandria.

Old Town Alexandria, along with what is known today as Arlington County, were originally part of Virginia, but then were ceded to the U.S. government in 1791 to form the District of Columbia. But in 1846, both Old Town and Arlington were ceded back to Virginia by the federal government.

At the time, there was increasing talk of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Alexandria's economy would suffer greatly if slavery were outlawed. At the same time, there was an active abolition movement in Alexandria. Pro-slavery business interests won out in their attempt to return Alexandria to Virginia.

Chapman explained that in 1827, the Quaker-led Benevolent Society for Ameliorating and Improving the Condition of the people of Color published a series of anti-slavery essays. As part of its mission, the group worked to ensure free Black people were not imprisoned at the city's slave jail, which captured runaway slaves and jailed people who had their "manumission" papers taken.

Slaves could sometimes arrange manumission by agreeing to "purchase themselves" by paying their owner an agreed amount. The members of the Benevolent Society would visit the slave jail in Alexandria to see if the people had their freedom papers.

Freed slaves could have been sent back into slavery if someone had come along and purchased them from the slave jail before their manumission papers were found to prove that they were a free person, Chapman said.

More than 30 years before the Civil War, abolitionist groups active in Alexandria were forced to work in secret after the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831 led to a crackdown on anti-slavery groups, he said.

The rebellion struck "fear into the hearts of a number of leaders across the Eastern Seaboard," Chapman explained. "Groups such as the Benevolent Society are then broken up ... to make sure there is no opportunity for a rebellion of any sorts in their locality."

In current times, with the Democrats controlling the Virginia General Assembly and introducing legislation to address racial inequality, the death penalty and other issues, Warner said the state has become more "forward-leaning."

"The one thing that is constant about our country is that there is always going to be change" as the nation "veers from one end of the spectrum back to the other," Warner said.

"I still believe — and I get a lot of grief from both sides on this — that the best policy is made when you try to combine good ideas from both sides and get stuff done," Warner said. "I also know that that may not be the most en vogue view these days because [it] seems the loudest voices on either end get the most attention."

Manumission Tour Company provides guided cultural heritage tours designed to highlight Alexandria’s extensive African American History.

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