Students explore legacy of human trafficking in Richmond on Untold Tour

A professor is taking her students out of the classroom and into the historical underbelly of Richmond for a class in the Wilder School about contemporary human exploitation.

To help her students understand how modern human trafficking has a relationship with the past, Maureen Moslow-Benway,professor in the Wilder School, took them on an ‘Untold Tour,’ of Richmond. The tour, which was founded by a longtime Richmond resident Free Egunfemi, is dedicated to filling in the missing pieces of Richmond’s ancestral history.

On Sep. 7 at dusk, students walked through Richmond sites connected to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Egunfemi showed the students the paths slaves took when they arrived in Richmond between 1840 and 1862. They went to Libby Hill park and Lumpkin’s Jail, a holding facility for slaves waiting to sold, used to be. The class also toured Richmond’s Ancestral African Burial Grounds.

“I founded Untold RVA because I wanted to make sure that the historical record was going to respect the positive things that are happening today and to create access points for these narratives to be retained in the language that is glorifying self-determination, resistance and intersectionality,” Egunfemi said.

Daniela Castro, a senior studying homeland security and emergency management, said Egunfemi opened her eyes to the hidden histories of the city. One of the students’ tasks was to explain the ties between modern day slavery and the country’s history of enslavement.

“It honestly broke my heart. I knew Richmond had a ton of history but I didn’t know how close I was to it. Shockoe Bottom is 5 minutes from VCU. I think human trafficking – sex trafficking, labor trafficking, etc. – is modern slavery,” Castro said. “Victims are being forced to work to pay off debts that will probably never be paid off, or sometimes they work just to stay alive. Slavery was a very real thing in this country and we need to stop trying to deny that it happened.”

Moslow-Benway believes in experiential learning. Over the semester, she has taken her students to speak with a human trafficking survivor, a prostitute who had spent half of her life in jail and a leading expert in sex abuse. She also took them on tour of Monument Ave. in contrast with the Untold Tour.

“I thought especially in light of all of the controversy going on with the monuments and slavery and the race issues in the U.S, was to tie that into the human trafficking class,” Moslow-Benway said. “I started by looking at the United State’s history with human trafficking, and slavery was the ultimate form of human trafficking.”

Egunfemi developed her tour to fit the curriculum of Moslow-Benway’s class as a part of Untold RVA COMMUNIVERSITY, a project that seeks to create a bridge between the university and subject matter experts.

To pay for the trips, Moslow-Benway received a Diversity and Inclusion grant from VCU. She said the trips have been powerful for herself, in addition to her students.

“Definitely eye opening – an awareness of the legacy of human trafficking in Richmond. I think they learned, for example that pretty much the City of Richmond was built by slaves,” Moslow-Benway said. “I think the more you do the more it sticks with you. And I feel quite fortunate that I have the opportunity with this class to make it really hands on learning.”

SaraRose Martin

Staff Writer