The Brave Mary Lumpkin Changed the World

by Fran Withrow 07.2022

Almost a year ago, I reviewed Sadeqa Johnson’s  “Yellow Wife,” a story inspired by Mary Lumpkin. Lumpkin was the enslaved concubine of the owner of Richmond’s most notorious slave jail. So when I heard that Kristen Green, author of “Something Must be Done About Prince Edward County” had published a non-fiction book about Lumpkin, I couldn’t wait to read it.

“The Devil’s Half Acre” was the name of Robert Lumpkin’s slave jail and is also the title of Green’s book. The jail was a primary point of contact in Richmond for slave traders who wanted to buy or sell enslaved people. Lumpkin bought and enslaved Mary when she was very young and forced her to live with him and bear his children.

There is very little tangible information to be found about Mary Lumpkin. Like all enslaved people, she was viewed as property, and since most of these women and men were denied the opportunity to become literate, researching their lives or tracing family history is challenging.

But there is still some information, and Green has teased it out, using what she learns as the basis for her book. The history of the time period and observations by Lumpkin’s contemporaries help flesh out a picture of this very courageous woman.

Despite her enslavement, Mary Lumpkin managed to talk her enslaver into moving their daughters to Massachusetts, a free state, where they could be educated. She knew that enslaved people were often sold after the death of their enslaver or as a means of paying off a debt. Moving the children was a way of protecting them from this possibility.

After her enslaver died, Mary Lumpkin inherited everything, including the slave jail. What she did with the jail was transformative: she sold it to Nathaniel Colver, who turned this building with its horrendous history into a school for the education of Black men. This school was eventually incorporated as Virginia Union University, which remains one of the oldest historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) in the United States.

Green sums up her remarkable book by examining how enslaved people built our country, yet their contributions and the history of their enslavement have been swept under the rug. Until we can respectfully acknowledge the horror of the slave trade as well as the contributions Black people have made to create our nation, healing cannot happen. 

Here in Richmond, Green says, we still grapple poorly with the legacy of slavery. Shockoe Bottom is the site of several slave jails and a Black burial ground, but these remain little known or protected. The resistance to removing Richmond’s Confederate statues, which were originally erected to intimidate Blacks, is also evidence that we still haven’t fully recognized the harm the slave trade did to Black women and men. 

A step in the right direction is to learn more about people like Mary Lumpkin. She protected her children and gave black men an almost undreamed of opportunity. She could easily have crumbled under the life she was forced to live. 

Instead, she changed the world.

“The Devil’s Half Acre” 

By Kristen Green

$30.00

Seal Press

333 pages