On August 15, 2025, I chose to spend my birthday walking through the layers of truth buried in Colonial Williamsburg. I took the Williamsburg Slavery Tour to understand more about the lives of the enslaved people who built this land and the systems that profited from their labor. These systems still impact us today.
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| This was our Tour Guide Lonnie Sanifer. He as great, interesting, and very knowledgeable. |
We began at the Windmill Farm, surrounded by corn stalks and a few tobacco plants. 
Our guide explained how tobacco had to be checked every day for worms. Enslaved people worked from sunup to sundown, cutting, curing, and rolling tobacco leaves into hogsheads holding up to 1,000 pounds.
Each hogshead was tagged with a log number, similar to a checkbook entry. That number was sent to an agent in London to credit the landowner once the shipment arrived. These owners were often “cash poor” not because they lacked wealth, but because their entire economic system was built on unpaid labor.
A New World? Not Quite
America was called the “New World,” but the land was already inhabited.
The first Europeans who came to Virginia were often indentured servants, usually contracted for seven years. This was vastly different from the hereditary, lifelong enslavement that would soon be imposed on Africans and their descendants.
By 1619, Africans arrived in Virginia, and by 1780, Williamsburg had become the capital. The city’s most notable streets were Duke of Gloucester, Nicholson, and Francis were laid by enslaved hands. Their stories live in the bricks, but their names are rarely told.
Slavery, Segregation, and Control
According to our guide, the treatment of enslaved people varied by decade and owner, but the regulation of Black lives remained constant:
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1619 to 1865: Slavery and slave codes
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1865 to 1960: Jim Crow
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1960 to 1980: Legal segregation
One law banned more than five Black people from gathering without a white person present. It wasn’t about safety. It was about control. If we couldn’t gather, we couldn’t organize. If we couldn’t organize, we couldn’t resist, but we did anyway.
Voices of Dissent
Some white men spoke against slavery, including Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin. Thomas Jefferson also did until around 1790, when he realized he could profit from breeding enslaved people in Virginia. At that point, his moral opposition faded. Breeding became cheaper than buying. Jefferson, like many others, shifted from philosopher to profiteer.
Convict Labor and Irish Servants
The tour guide discussed how Georgia began as a convict colony. The term “Irish slaves” came up, but these were actually indentured servants. While their treatment was often brutal, they had contracts and freedom dates. That’s not the same as chattel slavery, where you were property for life and so were your children.
Stories That Stood Out
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Mary Stith was a white woman and spinster who died in 1816. She was one of the few people in Williamsburg documented as having freed enslaved individuals in her will and left them property. That act set her apart in a society where freedom was rare and inheritance for Black people even rarer.
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Payton Randolph, one of Virginia’s wealthiest men and a cousin of Thomas Jefferson, enslaved at least 27 people.
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Robert Carter III was one of the largest slaveholders in colonial America, eventually freed 501 people. He left the Church of England and later the Baptist Church, facing backlash for his decisions. His story is worth deeper study.
Erasure in the Name of Restoration
When Colonial Williamsburg was restored in the 1930s with Rockefeller’s money, new deed restrictions were put in place. These made it hard or impossible for Black families to buy property in the restored historic district, even though their ancestors had built the very streets being “preserved.”
Brick by Brick: My Reflections
We walked down Duke of Gloucester Street and visited historic homes. One house still had the original bricks, some imprinted with the fingerprints of the enslaved people who made them. That image stayed with me. We weren’t just tourists we were walking through sacred ground.
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| The two imprints are said to be made from the fingers of someone enslaved who made the brick. |
I asked the guide if other tours in Williamsburg talk about the role of slavery. He said it depends on the guide. But with over 51 percent of Williamsburg’s population once enslaved, you can’t tell this town’s story honestly without talking about them.
The Uncomfortable Truth
This is our land. We cultivated it. We built it. Yet we’ve been written out of its history. Even the church found ways to profit, taxing homes with slaves over 16 years old. This wasn’t to discourage slavery it was to benefit from it.
Slavery wasn’t just a Southern issue it was a national economy. It was a system of control, of wealth, of spiritual theft. That system hasn’t ended it has just changed form.
Why This Matters for The Black Folder Project
The Black Folder Project is about legacy, remembering what’s been hidden and reclaiming what’s been lost. This tour reminded me that we must continue telling the truth, even when others try to bury it. You'll see the photos I took, especially of the old trees. They’ve stood for hundreds of years, silent witnesses to everything.
We are not just descendants of survivors. We are descendants of builders, visionaries, and fighters. The story of Williamsburg is our story. And we have the right to tell it.
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| This is the sign into the Visitors Center to get your tickets, you don't have to go here there is a ticket house on Duke of Gloucester Street. It's not as glamorous but more convenient. |
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| Saw this Masonic Temple Building on my way back to my car |
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| Went to the court house to see how that was run...just like now...unfair to black people |
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| Visited the Governor Mansion - It was boring to me. It was like they tried too hard but didn't bring it to life really. |
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| Picture of Queen Charlotte that is in the Governor's Mansion |
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| The carriage rides are the highlight. All I saw was people still thinking they are better than others. You even had some people (ADULTS) riding in the wagons WAVING at us walking. Some form of disgusting to me. |
