In the heart of Richmond Virginia lies Shockoe, the oldest part of the City of Richmond. Shockoe was a center of exchange for the people of Tsenacomoco (the Powhatan Confederacy), one of the earliest British trading posts, and the northern epicenter of the domestic slave trade in the antebellum era. It is here that the Shockoe Institute is undertaking a transformative project – creating a 12,300-square-foot learning center within Richmond’s iconic Main Street Station.  

The Shockoe Institute’s mission is to deepen public understanding of the enduring impact of the domestic slave trade on America’s economic and social life. The Institute does this in three ways. First, by immersing visitors in a 10,000+ square foot experience that helps them grapple with the evolution of enslavement in Virginia, the oldest of slave states. Second, by inviting visitors into the Institute’s Learning Lab to further explore themes presented in the immersive experience using multi-media tools and wide-ranging, inter-disciplinary content. Third, by encouraging visitors to participate in the Institute’s digital and in-person programs that will, on an annual basis, focus on a “big question” of contemporary relevance. These “big questions” are designed to invite participants on learning journeys where, equipped with the Institute’s tools and resources, they can deepen their own understanding of that uniquely American story, the story of the struggle to expand human freedom.   

The Shockoe Institute will provide visitors with an immersive educational experience that delves into Richmond's pivotal role in the domestic slave trade and serves as a gateway to an adjacent memorial campus. Through innovative technologies, interactive exhibits, and engaging programming, visitors will embark on a journey of discovery, confronting the centrality of the domestic slave trade to America’s rise as a global power and the “throughlines” of that history into modern America. The Institute’s goal is to create a richly documented evidence-based emotionally impactful journey designed to promote deeper understanding of the relationship between the facts of our shared history and today’s societal challenges. 

Visitors to the Institute will learn how the development of the interstate slave trade was fueled by the expansion of cotton cultivation in the Deep South and how Deep South demand for the enslaved resulted in the forced relocation of over an estimated one million people during the antebellum period – a period known as the second middle passage. Visitors will see first-hand how Richmond’s business and economic infrastructure facilitated this human devastation and how the City sat at the nexus of a rapidly evolving system of global commerce, characterized by increasingly sophisticated tools and techniques that transcended geographic, cultural, and even temporal boundaries.  

The Shockoe Institute is deeply committed to executing its mission using a data informed, evidence-based approach. In an era where informed discussion is too often neither, the Institute seeks to combine intellectual rigor with the generosity of spirit necessary to encourage visitors to embark on enriching and rewarding learning journeys. We will neither shy away from that which is brutal and inhumane in the story of the struggle to expand human freedom nor will we gloss over the facts of history.  Neither, however, will we use evidence in the historical record to inflame or exacerbate contemporary intolerance. Ours is not a political agenda. Rather, we seek to contribute to the growth of public knowledge about Americans shared history in order to support, inform and encourage the highest quality debate about the relationship between our past, our present, and our future.