Knowledge of this Cannot Be Hidden
A Commemorative Act at the University of Richmond
The following is a letter written in response to many of the events that occurred during Spring 2020.
This documentary film was created by students in the class “Collaborative Arts Lab: Dance, Humanities, and Technology” as well as two students from “Gender, Race, and Performance Across the Americas,” and guest artist Kevin LaMarr Jones ’94.
It was inspired by a one-year study of University of Richmond history that resulted in a report detailing the centrality of enslavement during at least a century of the land’s history when hundreds of people were enslaved on plantations that at various times contained all or part of the current campus.”
The film below was used by the Burial Ground Memorialization Committee to launch conversations about commemorative design plans and is now used for First Year Orientation.
On June 15, 2020, Alicia Díaz and I sent the following letter to the campus community —
Dear Colleagues, Friends, and Allies,
Amidst these tumultuous times of global pandemic and national trauma caused by an epidemic of police violence, state-sanctioned lynching, and unjust incarceration of Black people, we hope that you are safe, healthy, and finding ways to recharge.
In the spirit of instilling hope and creating a more just campus community, we would like to share the video project Knowledge of This Cannot be Hidden: Westham Burying Ground Commemorative Act at the University of Richmond created by students in the class “Collaborative Arts Lab: Dance, Humanities, and Technology” as well as two students from “Gender, Race, and Performance Across the Americas” and guest artist Kevin LaMarr Jones ’94).
Inspired by the goals of the Institutional History Cohort to engage students in the history of the land we occupy and its legacy as well as the East End Cemetery Collaboratory to engage students in the reclamation and preservations of East End Cemetery, a historic African American burial ground, we worked with our students to collaboratively create a commemorative act honoring the lives of indigenous and black enslaved people who stewarded this land.
Gravesites are constant reminders of people’s living stories. When we deny the existence of black burial sites, we deny the existence of black people, but we are committed to using the arts as a platform to centering anti-racism and amplifying the voices and history of Black people because BLACK LIVES MATTER. It is in the process of sharing and embodying this history that we can collectively grapple with a racial past that still haunts us today.
In solidarity,
Alicia and Patricia