Harmony Way

As mentioned, the Shockoe District was and is the banking and commercial district of the region. Indigenous mounds were the physical manifestation of power: points of trade, spiritual centering. Whoever maintains the mound sustains power, thus we find the commercial and political center of Virginia. In colonial times there was a street named Harmony, whose pathway intersected the downtown mound. Today the street is called E. Marshall Street near 16th Street. There was also once a Wall Street in this district, discovered by archeological dig. This pathway now crosses the African Burial Grounds, and would have traversed across the I95 highway to the Egyptian Building if it were not cut off at 16th.

Power is the ability to define reality. How do we define harmony, particularly in the sacred space that we find ourselves in? Under the overpass you will find the African Burial Grounds.  The city's oldest municipal cemetery formerly referred to as the Negro Burial Grounds was located here around 1799. By 1811, Christopher McPherson, a clerk of Richmond was complaining of the "disgustful" state of the cemetery where some coffins were being washed away by the Shockoe stream.

The grounds were further challenged as the I95 highway was paved through the area, and in more recent decades activists called from the removal of a parking lot from the sacred site. What now would be pleasing to the spirits we ask?