Richmond film tells overlooked Black stories from America's founding
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Director Stacey Holman (middle) and Sesha Joi Moon (right) at Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival earlier this month. Photo: Courtesy of Sesha Joi Moon
A new Richmond-made documentary centers Black Americans in its telling of the nation's founding story as the U.S. marks its 250th anniversary.
Why it matters: One of the film's main figures is a Richmonder whose own history is currently being restored in Jackson Ward.
The big picture: "Declarations: Black Americans and the Revolutionary War," an hourlong film from VPM released this summer on PBS and YouTube, follows four Black Americans who fought for freedom while the U.S. was declaring its own:
- Abraham Peyton Skipwith, a Richmonder who bought his freedom and became one of the city's first Black landowners.
- James Lafayette, a spy who contributed to Britain's surrender at Yorktown.
- Elizabeth Freeman, who sued for her freedom in Massachusetts, citing the state's constitution that people were born free and equal.
- Harry Washington, who escaped George Washington's Mount Vernon and fought for the British after they offered freedom to enslaved people.
Zoom in: Skipwith's cottage, which he built in the 1790s, was moved to Goochland in the 1950s when state leaders built a highway through Jackson Ward.
- And it's become central to the work of the JXN Project, a nonprofit telling the history of the former "Harlem of the South" — the birthplace of Black capitalism.
- Co-founded by Virginia chief diversity officer Sesha Joi Moon and her sister Enjoli Moon — both of whom are in the documentary — the project has rebuilt the cottage as a historic Richmond site that will make its permanent debut this fall.
What they're saying: "I hope that it can be restorative, but also a reconciliation of sorts through his story," Sesha says in the documentary. "Because it was complicated. As is America. As is Virginia. And definitely, as is Richmond."
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