"The National Slavery Museum at Fredericksburg is envisioned as the centerpiece of the 2,100-acre Celebrate Virginia, a commercial, recreational and tourism-based project in Fredericksburg and adjacent Stafford County." The site is " a short drive from where slaves first entered this country and the locale of several Civil War battles over whether to set them free.."
–The Washington Post

Former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, the grandson of slaves and the first elected black governor in US history, said the city of Fredericksburg was chosen because of the beauty of the museum site and its proximity to Washington, Interstate 95 and two major airports.

"It’s hard to say that any site hits you like this site does," Governor Wilder said of the 39-acre bluff towering over the Rappahannock River where the Museum will be built.

Why Virginia Was Selected For the Location of the U.S. National Slavery Museum?

If it is possible to understand the American paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom, then Virginia is surely the place to begin.
-Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom:  The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia, 1975

• Virginia was the largest of the new United States, in territory, population, and influence.
• Virginia was both the birthplace of the American Revolution and at the same time the largest slaveholding state.
• Virginia slaves grew most of the tobacco that helped to finance American independence.
• Virginia adopted the first state constitution with a bill of rights.
• Virginians help draft not only the Declaration of Independence but also the U.S. Constitution of 1787 and the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.
• Of the first five U.S. Presidents four were Virginians; they were all slaveholders.
• In 1661 Virginia instituted the first slave law in the Southern colonies.
• Virginia owned more than 40 percent of all the slaves in the new nation. (U.S. Bureau of Census, Historical Statistics of the U.S.: Colonial Times to 1957).
• In 1989, it was Virginia that elected the 1st African American governor who also happens to be the grandson of slaves.  He served from 1990-1994.

Fredericksburg, Virginia And Slavery

...there were Negroes and whites who were willing to run the risk of legal prosecution and social disapprobation in order to teach slaves.  Negro schools are known to have existed in Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; Fayetteville, New Bern and Raleigh, North Carolina; Lexington and Louisville , Kentucky; Fredericksburg and Norfolk, Virginia and others in Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana. 
-John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom:  A History of Negro Americans, 1967

Find more information about Fredericksburg, Virginia at

• www.famcc.org
• www.historypoint.org
• www.fredericksburg.com