One early June 2020 in the midsts of the Pandemic, I received an email from Ricardo Villalba owner
Washington Digital Media asking me to direct a documentary about Mary Lumpkin. Ricardo was hired by the
Smith Group to videotape public meetings concerning memorializing the Devil’s Half Acre in Richmond, Virginia’s
Shockhoe Bottom. The Devil’s Half Acre, was owned and operated by Robert Lumpkin, a brutal enslaver, breeder, jailer and trader. Lumpkin was “given” Mary when she was eight years old, she had the first of seven children by Robert when
she was 13 years old. Mary was very fair skinned and Robert Lumpkin passed her off as his wife. In the midsts of the horrors she endured, Mary managed to convince Robert, at the cost of exposing herself as a Black woman, to free their children on the above ground railroad.
Not only did she suffer unimaginable brutality at Lumpkin’s hands, she witnessed the inhumane treatment of the enslaved men and women he had on the property. When able, Mary would try to comfort the enslaved men and women by singing hymns with them and even teaching some of them to read.
Before he died, Robert designated Mary as owner of The Devil’s Half Acre. She became owner of the property on which she was once considered property and renamed it God’s Half Acre and gave the property to Virginia Union University, the first Black Theological Seminary. Mary left Richmond, Virginia moved to New Richmond, Ohio where she lived the rest of her days and is buried there.
The Film – Liberation – Lumpkin’s Legacy
Mary Lumpkin’s story is amazing, and certainly one that cannot be found in America’s history books. The necessary resilience and strength many Black women have, can be chronicled from the time of the Middle Passage of the Slave trade, to the Jim Crow South, to urban hubs whose streets are often flowing with the blood of Black men and women, victims of State sanctioned murder. Mary is the touchstone of the film, I also feature Black women today who work to change the Criminal Justice System, women working to end over policing in Black and brown communities, working to close the disparities in maternal and infant mortality, put an end to food apartheid and so much more, they’re featured in the film as well, I say their names, I tell their stories. Although the institution of enslavement is no longer, the unjust systems of oppression that had its beginnings in slavery are alive and well.
Ancestral Intervention
While standing in line at a local soup shop, Ricardo was sharing the story of Mary Lumpkin with a friend. He heard a voice behind him saying “Are you talking about my great, great grandmother”? That voice came from Professor Carolivia Herron, a professor at Howard University and the great, great, granddaughter of Mary Lumpkin. Needless to say, she was interviewed and shared the oral history passed down generation to generation from family members. She was an integral guide of Mary’s life to say the least. On Juneteenth 2024, Prof. Herron and I traveled to New Richmond, Ohio. We were hosted by Greg Roberts, an historian of the Ohio Underground Railroad. We visited Second Baptist Church where Mary worshipped and Samarian Cemetery where Mary is buried.
Prof. Herron performed a reenactment as Mary chronicling her life on the Devil’s Half Acre and as a free woman. The footage of our visit to New Richmond, Ohio is of course featured in the documentary.