Originally scheduled for Saturday, April 11, 2020, the public dedication ceremony for the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers was postponed to the following year due to Covid-19. With the pandemic still ongoing, we hope you will join us for the virtual events on Friday, April 9 and Saturday, April 10, 2021.
More about the Memorial: The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia began in 2010 with a student-led effort to critically examine the institution’s history and recognize the lives of the enslaved laborers. The Memorial honors the lives, labor, and perseverance of an estimated 4,000 enslaved individuals who built and sustained daily life at UVA between 1817 and 1865. The Memorial's circular design references both a freedom ring and a broken shackle that signals the end of physical bondage. The Memorial is oriented tangent to two paths. The first path leads from the Memorial in the direction of the North Star, which for the enslaved led to freedom. The second path aligns with the sunset on March 3rd, which commemorates the day that Union troops emancipated the local enslaved community at the close of the Civil War.
The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers
