By: Jordan Meadows, Staff Writer
Mary Lumpkin, a woman who, despite enduring unimaginable suffering and trauma as an enslaved person, became an unlikely architect of an enduring legacy of education and empowerment for generations of Black students.
Lumpkin’s story is tied to a site once infamous as "The Devil’s Half Acre" — a brutal slave jail in Richmond, Virginia, run by Robert Lumpkin, a notorious slave trader. In the mid-1800s, Richmond was a central hub in the U.S. slave trade, second only to New Orleans, and Lumpkin’s Jail was a place of horrific torment. The jail was the place enslaved Africans were held before being sold at auction, and where those who attempted to escape were punished in the cruelest ways.
As Dr. Cleve Tinsley IV, executive director of the Center for African American History and Culture at Virginia Union University (VUU), describes it, “Many of those who were enslaved died of disease and mistreatment…It was a filthy, grimy place.”
Lumpkin, born enslaved in 1832, was forced to bear Robert Lumpkin’s children, but she also harbored dreams for a better future, not just for herself, but for her children. After Robert Lumpkin died in 1866, just a year after the Civil War ended, Mary inherited his property, including the infamous slave jail.
In an extraordinary act of vision and defiance, she leased the jail to Nathaniel Colver, a Baptist minister, and abolitionist searching for a location to start a school for newly freed African Americans as an opportunity for education of the mind in an ethical, religious environment. This lease marked the beginning of an educational revolution.
Colver converted the former slave jail into a schoolhouse, and what became known as “God’s Half Acre” — a transformation from a site of pain to a site of hope — eventually grew into Richmond Theological Seminary, the precursor to Virginia Union University–one of the oldest Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the United States.
“Without Mary Lumpkin, Virginia Union University would not exist,” said Dr. Tinsley, emphasizing the crucial role she played in creating the institution. “She was an incredibly courageous woman who not only survived unimaginable hardship but also ensured that the generations after her would have access to an education.”
VUU’s roots go beyond the initial lease of Lumpkin’s Jail. The school arose from a merger of several institutions, all founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. These included Richmond Theological Seminary, Wayland Seminary, Hartshorn Memorial College (one of the first colleges for African American women), and Storer College. Hartshorn Memorial College eventually merged with VUU as well. Famous students in these institutions there included Dr. Booker T. Washington and Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.
The school moved to a different location by 1873 and Lumpkin sold the land. Lumpkin then operated a restaurant in New Orleans alongside one of her daughters before dying in 1905 in Ohio. A street at Virginia Union University was named in honor of Lumpkin.
In 2003, Hakim Lucas, President of Virginia Union University, stated that "Virginia Union University is the legacy of Mary Lumpkin, but it is also the legacy of every African American woman that's alive today and has lived and struggled before for her children... Mary Lumpkin represents the highest form of the ideal of what social justice means for us in our world today"
Today, Virginia Union University continues to honor its legacy by providing a comprehensive liberal arts education, with a particular emphasis on moral values and ethics. It has produced some of the nation’s most prominent leaders, including Doug Wilder, the first Black governor of Virginia.
“We always tell the stories of our Black male heroes, but we don’t hear much about our sheroes,” Tinsley said, referring to Mary Lumpkin.
Lumpkin’s story is a powerful reminder that even in the darkest of places, there is the potential for transformation and redemption. The land where enslaved people once suffered has been repurposed as a place of education and hope — a legacy that will continue to inspire for generations to come.
