Charlottesville Marker Designates Site of City’s Old Slave Market

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

Charlottesville recently unveiled a historical marker at Court Square Park where adult and juvenile enslaved Blacks were sold for over a century, from 1762 to 1865.

The sales occurred once a month on “Court Day.” Transactions of those sales were recorded in the Albemarle County Courthouse – where the transactions are still archived. The  Charlottesville Historic Resources Committee spearheaded the monument’s erection starting in 2023, after a local resident stole the previous monument in 2020. It was replaced by a temporary marker. 

Charlottesville’s new historical marker is one of more than 2,900 historical markers located throughout Virginia that commemorate events, people and places of regional, statewide or national significance.

“We’re here today to formally acknowledge the truth, the painful truth, about what happened right here on this ground,” Dede Smith, former Charlottesville City Councilor and chair of the Charlottesville Historic Resources Committee, said at the March 3 unveiling ceremony. “In the 18th and 19th century, men, women and children were bought and sold right here in Court Square.”

Smith added: “Their lives, their families and their futures were treated like nothing more than commodities. Today, we take this one small step toward ensuring that their lives are not forgotten.”

Charlottesville Mayor Juandiego Wade said at the ceremony. “This marker represents the suffering of countless Black men, women and children for more than 100 years in this community. It is so important to make sure that the next generation understands the histories and the struggles of African-Americans right here in the community where they live and learn,” he said. “We have a long way to go, but part of that journey begins with this marker.”

Records show that between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the Americas. At least 10.7 million Africans survived and arrived in the Americas. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has compiled information about more than 36,000 voyages that forcibly transported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic between 1514 and 1866.

Schmidt, an associate religion professor at the University of Virginia and HRC member, characterized the newly installed slave monument as an achievement – but not an endpoint.

“We keep revising our community’s memory,” she said. “The work of history doesn’t end. As we learn more, as we unsurface more, as we interpret better, our stories about ourselves hopefully become more inclusive.”

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Charlottesville’s new marker contains the following inscription: “Between 1762 and 1865, auctioneers sold enslaved men, women, and children at various locations in Court Square: outside taverns, at the Jefferson Hotel, at the “Number Nothing” building, in front of the Albemarle County Courthouse (where sales were then recorded), and, according to tradition, from a tree stump. After Thomas Jefferson’s death, 33 enslaved people from his Monticello estate were auctioned at the Eagle Hotel in January 1829 to satisfy his debts. Enslaved Charlottesville residents Fountain Hughes and Maria Perkins recalled Court Day sales as dreaded occasions that separated Black families. Such sales were frequent in Virginia, where the domestic slave trade was central to the economy.”