The Devil's Half Acre
The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South's Most Notorious Slave Jail
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
The inspiring true story of an enslaved woman who liberated an infamous slave jail and transformed it into one of the nation’s first HBCUs
In The Devil’s Half Acre, New York Times bestselling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre.” When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre,” a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams. It still exists today as Virginia Union University, one of America’s first Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
A sweeping narrative of a life in the margins of the American slave trade, The Devil’s Half Acre brings Mary Lumpkin into the light. This is the story of the resilience of a woman on the path to freedom, her historic contributions, and her enduring legacy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The unlikely story of how a former "slave jail" in Richmond, Va., became Virginia Union University, an HBCU that "has elevated and nurtured generations of Black men and women" is chronicled in this intriguing if speculative history. Journalist Green (Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County) spotlights Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who inherited the jail property from her owner (and the father of her five children) after the Civil War and rented it out as a school for freedmen. Drawing on census records, Federal Writer's Project oral histories, and archaeological research, Green fills in the gaps in Lumpkin's biography with details about the brutal conditions at Lumpkin's Jail, which held captured runaways as well as men and women about to be shipped to plantations in the Lower South, and the experiences of other enslaved women who were forced to bear their owners' children. Though frequent passages imagining what Mary Lumpkin "likely" did, or how she "probably" felt, add up to a less than satisfying record of her life, Green packs the narrative with vivid details about 19th-century Richmond, the domestic slave trade, and the history of Black education in America. This is a valiant and thought-provoking attempt to rescue a life lost to history.
