Amna Nawaz:

The Shockoe Institute in Richmond, Virginia, opened its doors this spring to try to open minds about the enduring impact of enslavement and how to seek solutions to improve civic life now.

I took a look at the effort for our series Art in Action at the intersection of arts and democracy, part of our Canvas coverage.

A Tuesday summer afternoon and another student tour through American history.

Woman:

So I never use the term slave. What term do I use, those of you who know me? A what? An enslaved person.

Amna Nawaz:

Like other institutions, this one tells the story of America's system of slavery. But 17-year-old Alana Newton and 14-year-old Tatiana Porter say this exhibit called Expanding Freedom goes further than what they learned in school.

Alana Newton, Girls For a Change: You can physically feel how severe and how textbooks taught in school will try to sugarcoat it and lessen the severity.

Tatiana Porter, Girls For a Change: Some people are not taking into consideration of what our ancestors did for us. Walking through this exhibit really opened up my mind to different perspectives.

Amna Nawaz:

That link from the past to the present is central to the Shockoe Institute, located in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy and once the largest trading market for enslaved people in the upper South.

Marland Buckner, President and CEO, Shockoe Institute: People are generally unaware of the sheer size of the domestic slave trade.

Amna Nawaz:

Marland Buckner is president and CEO.

Marland Buckner:

Nearly one million enslaved Americans were moved from the upper South to the lower South, forcibly removed, in many instances forced to march 1,000 miles. It's 1,000 miles from Richmond to Natchez, 1,000 miles, the equivalent of one 747 jet per week.

The first half of the 19th century, is an extraordinary time of deprivation and of tyranny. And that is not a story that many Americans are really conversant in at all.

Amna Nawaz:

The institute was born of an 11 million dollar grant from the Mellon Foundation. For the record, the foundation is also a funder of the "News Hour."

Buckner and his team say they aim to focus on the humanity of the individual, turning those numbers into names and details, all faces and portraits displayed at eye level, look-throughs in the walls, showing how stories and events in one moment are connected to another, and a life-size video depicting the forced March from Richmond to Natchez, Mississippi, featuring this young boy, who turns to make eye contact with visitors.

You say museum-like. What does that mean?

Marland Buckner:

We're not a collecting institution. We don't collect anything. What we are is a place of learning, reflection and, most importantly, of action.

It's our hope that what we will do through the exhibit experience is give visitors the opportunity to ask questions about where things are today, where things should be today, and how we can work together to use the lessons of our history to improve our civic life to make a better tomorrow.

Amna Nawaz:

The 10,000-square-foot institute sits within the old Main Street train station in Richmond's Shockoe Bottom neighborhood.

Marland Buckner:

When you think about the movement of people, of capital, and of cotton, our visitors are generally very surprised to learn of the financial sophistication that was a part of this system.

People think about enslaved people as being bought and sold in markets. Yes, that happened. But enslaved Americans were mortgaged, they were rented, they were insured.

Amna Nawaz:

Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Black people were bought, sold and trafficked from this district, which houses the infamous Goodwin Slave Jail, where Solomon Northup was held after being kidnapped from Washington, D.C., as documented in his 1853 memoir "Twelve Years a Slave"...

Actor:

Come back here, boy.

Amna Nawaz:

... which inspired the 2013 film by the same name.

Senior consulting historian Greg Kimball says the economic through line is integral to understanding how American history informs its future.

Gregg Kimball, Senior Consulting Historian, Shockoe Institute:

We're just going about our lives. We have systems that we think are just predestined to be. But people made decisions that African enslaved people would be the core of our economic system.

And so what decisions are we making today? How are we going to perfect that liberty that Jefferson talked about? To me, that's the story of America.

Amna Nawaz:

Aesthetically, that translates to visitors walking across a carpet that maps out with orange dots locations of the dozens of businesses built around the slave trade in town,angled walls in one section on the Reconstruction era to invoke the feeling of pressure and limitations of the time, and displays that reveal central facts to Virginia's specific role in shaping America's system of slavery and the economy around it.

The 1705, for example, I step into the light.

Marland Buckner:

1705 is exactly when Virginia lawmakers decided that slavery would be based on race.

Amna Nawaz:

Explicitly tying it to race.

Marland Buckner:

Precisely.

Amna Nawaz:

And Virginia was the first to do that.

Marland Buckner:

Virginia was the first to do it. And we're still fighting that today.

Amna Nawaz:

L'Rai Arthur-Mensah has worked on exhibits around the world before joining the Shockoe Institute.

L'Rai Arthur-Mensah, Director of Local Projects, Shockoe Institute: This was where all the chaos was ensuing with the Civil War. We needed to select specific elements to make sure that people understood that decisions made at this point in time actually impact decisions that were made down the line 100 years or 200 years later.

Amna Nawaz:

Concluding the hour-long experience is The Lab, a gathering place where visitors like Alana, Tatiana and their group talk through what they have seen and tackle questions like what they can do now.

Girl:

Why would they treat others like that if they wanted to be more like God?

Woman:

That's a really valid question. And let's just be clear, it's not an altruism. Not every white person felt this way. And it's also an altruism that not every Black person also felt oppressed.

The system of enslavement could never function without some form of collaboration.

Marland Buckner:

It's often said that the United States is the world's longest functioning democracy. But I am one of the first generation to be born into the United States as a fully functioning multiracial democracy.

Our democracy is actually very young. And when you understand that point, you can begin to see the enduring impact of racial slavery.

Amna Nawaz:

Do you think there was something for you personally being part of that generation knowing your place in the American story, American history that said you have to do this?

Marland Buckner:

Deep down, probably more than I realized. My grandfather sat on his grandfather's knee. That man was born enslaved. I sat on my grandfather's knee. When you think of these questions as abstractions, that's what they become.

When you put them in human terms, they look much different.

Amna Nawaz:

Later this year, the institute is taking its mission outside of Richmond, a New Orleans symposium with artists, activists and scholars on the impact of Confederate monument removals, and another program called Unfinished Business streaming nationally this fall.