Silent Witnesses
A Lynchburg, Virginia, community event this coming Saturday
This Saturday afternoon, April 12th, the Silent Witnesses project will celebrate Lynchburg’s Emancipation Day through a community event remembering its enslaved predecessors. We at the Bridge of Lament encourage you to attend if you are in the area. See below for details:
“By 1860, the use of slave labor by free whites in Lynchburg had become pervasive,” writes Thomas M. McGrath in a 1994 statistical study “Slavery in Lynchburg, Virginia.”1
Silent Witnesses is the first comprehensive study of the history of slavery in Lynchburg, Virginia. Its mission is to document the experience of enslaved people of African descent and related sites in our city and to educate citizens of all ages about this history. It is a collaborative public history project involving historians, genealogists, archaeologists, museum professionals, and volunteers.2
James M. Elson, Lynchburg, Virginia: The First Two Hundred Years, Warwick House Publishers, p. 44