"It's Triggering and it Should Be:" Downtown Tour Facilitates Discussions About Black History
Descendants of local civil rights activists and local Black leaders participated in a tour on Thursday of Fredericksburg's evolving historic landscape.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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When Lateefah Muhammad’s uncle was young, a white man offered to pay him a quarter if he would stand on the auction block at the corner of Charles and William streets in downtown Fredericksburg for a photo.
“He didn’t know what it was all about, and a quarter was a lot of money for him at the time,” said Muhammed.
Muhammad’s uncle took the money home and proudly showed his father. “My grandfather took the money from him and gave him a whipping,” Muhammad said.
Muhammad told this story during a Thursday morning tour of the city’s notable Black history and civil rights sites, while paused in front of the downtown corner where the auction block stood from 1843 until 2020.
She and her sister, Mary Malone, are daughters of the late Thomas and Grace Sprow, a Fredericksburg native and longtime member of Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site). Sprow was one of the members of the Walker-Grant High School Class of 1950, which staged a protest in downtown Fredericksburg when they were denied the right to enter through the front door of the Fredericksburg Community Center—now the Dorothy Hart Community Center—for their graduation ceremony.
Malone and Muhammad were joined by Pamela Bridgewater, a former U.S. ambassador and Fredericksburg native who participated in community conversations held in 2017 and 2018 about whether the auction block should be relocated from the downtown corner.
Bridgewater had a similar story to share about one of her relatives, who was also paid by a white person to stand on the auction block and who also got a whipping from her parents.
“This has been happening for centuries” and up until just a few years ago, said Gaila Sims, vice president and curator of African American history and special programs for the Fredericksburg Area Museum. She described the famous postcard from the early twentieth century depicting an elderly Albert Crutchfield standing near the auction block.
Crutchfield and some of his family members were among the last enslaved people to be sold from the auction block in the late 1850s, Sims said. Crutchfield was enslaved in the Planter’s Hotel, which was located in the building behind the auction block, so “he saw sales happening there and then he was sold from there,” she said.
These painful memories and the way they have been exploited influenced the decision to remove the auction block from its downtown location in June of 2020 and relocate it to the Area Museum, where it’s featured in the physical and digital exhibit “A Monumental Weight: The Auction Block in Fredericksburg, Virginia.”
Earlier this month, FAM announced that a design team—eo Studio—has been selected to develop plans for a memorial at the auction block’s former site. Eto Otitigbe, the founder of eo Studio, attended Thursday’s tour as well, and will be in town through March 1 to learn about the community and what it needs from the site.
Even among those who attended Thursday’s tour—which included Aaron Dobynes, pastor at Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site), and Chris Williams, assistant director of the University of Mary Washington’s James Farmer Multicultural Center and one of the main developers of Fredericksburg’s Civil Rights Trail, along with Muhammad, Malone, and Bridgewater—feelings about whether or not the auction block should have been relocated are unsettled.
“I think of that block as Calvary,” Dobynes said, referring to the site immediately outside Jerusalem’s walls where Jesus was crucified, according to the Bible. “I didn’t want it to be moved. Pain is part of truth and reconciliation. If it’s out of sight, then I worry that it’s out of mind.”
“It’s triggering, and it should be,” he continued. “History is not meant to be sweetness and light.”
Malone said the current political climate, in which efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion are being rolled back, makes her think that people no longer recognize the auction block and what it represents as being wrong.
“If the mindset that this was wrong hasn’t changed, it might as well still be there,” she said.
Bridgewater said that during the community conversations around the auction block, and to this day, she wonders, “Do people understand all of what this city has been?”
What is clear to all of the participants is that now is not the time to stay silent about the history of slavery, segregation, and civil rights.
“It is our responsibility to teach it,” Bridgewater said.
Dobynes said, “There are those who want to silence us, but we cannot fall victim to that genocidal thinking. The truth is the truth is the truth—and we must correct those who tell half-truths.”
Just like her young uncle who didn’t know the history of the auction block when a white man asked him to stand on it, Malone said there are descendants of the 1950 Walker-Grant class today who don’t know the danger those teenagers put themselves in when they protested segregation in the streets of Fredericksburg.
“Our parents made us understand that we were not ‘less than’ and that these incidents should be talked about,” she said. “I feel like we need to talk about it. People need to know.”
This article was updated on February 28 to clarify statements from Ms. Malone and correct the spelling of Ms. Muhammad’s name.
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On the back of that 1920's Postcard it says " Albert Crutchfield, shown in the picture was sold from the block about 1959, at which time when he was a boy at 15"
On the back of that 1920's Postcard it says " Albert Crutchfield, shown in the picture was sold from the block about 1959, at which time when he was a boy at 15"