In 2021, when Fredericksburg’s City Council entered into an MOU to “tell a more complete story” of the city’s history, the document called for a new hire at the Fredericksburg Area Museum to help establish an exhibit centered on the slave auction block that had long stood beside the 400 block of William Street.
Upon arrival, however, Gaila Sims quickly realized that the auction block’s historical legacy wasn’t the only heavy matter. The block itself weighed more than 1,200 pounds, meaning that its sheer mass precluded a display on the museum’s second (main) or third floors.
But Sims, whose original title with FAM was Curator of African American History and Special Projects, wanted the region’s Black history displayed front and center. The museum’s Living Legacies exhibit, which opens Friday from 5-9 p.m., will be hard to miss.
“It’s very important to me that this exhibition is on the second floor,” Sims said. “It’s the first thing you’ll see when you come in the front door, and it’ll be up for three years.”
For Sims, the long-planned exhibit symbolizes a fulfillment of the city’s efforts to tell that story.
“In my head, this is kind of the last piece of that MOU to be completed,” Sims said.
Fredericksburg doesn’t have a dedicated Black history museum, and FAM takes its role in telling that story seriously, said CEO and President Sam McKelvey.
“What’s really difficult about an organization like ours is that, you know, we’re telling a story of millions of years of history, right?” McKelvey said. “And so when you’re doing something as large and important as African-American history, the history of African-Americans in Fredericksburg, you have to kind of think through it.”
For her part, Sims started by breaking down events into four chronological “zones”: enslavement, Civil War and Reconstruction, segregation and the Civil Rights movement to today.
“I figured that out before I even got here,” she said. “And that is helpful because that’s how I could order the stories. So when I got here and I started talking to people and, you know, my number one thing that I do is I just try to listen.”
She heard from members of the Walker-Grant High School Class of 1950, who staged a historic protest on their graduation day; she heard from elders like the Rev. Hashmel Turner, who has worked to honor the U.S. 23rd Colored Troops, the first Black unit to face Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in battle.
And she incorporated efforts that were already underway, like the Fredericksburg Civil Rights Trail that was unveiled last year under the leadership of Chris Williams and Victoria Matthews. In February 2024, the city’s 21-stop trail was added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.
“What I was trying to do with this exhibition is capture all the work that everyone else is doing as well as the work we’ve done at the museum, because these efforts are not just like me showing up and doing this,” Sims said.
But Sims undoubtedly “led the way,” said McKelvey, and her mark on the exhibit is unmistakable. The historian lives on the grounds of the former Chatham Manor in southern Stafford County, and the first thing museum goers will see upon entering are the names of five Black men — Abram, Cupid, James, Phil and Robin — who staged an uprising against their overseer there in 1805.
“I know some people know that story, but I don’t know if everybody does,” she said. “And so having it here is very important to me.”
By nature, museum openings tend to be intimate, restrained affairs.
If that’s your thing, avoid Fredericksburg’s Market Square from 5-9 p.m. on Friday. Because when FAM introduces Living Legacies, it’s going to be a party.
Sims said she drew from her experiences at the Oakland Museum of California and other institutions that offered a sense of “joy and communal comfort” during openings.
Upon entering the exhibit, museum-goers will be issued two free drink tickets for a cash bar on the third floor. Festivities in the square will feature a live performance from local jazz legend Harry Henderson, a poetry reading and formal remarks from museum staff. Juno Todd will introduce his mother, Gaye Adegbalola, a local musician and activist to whom the exhibit is dedicated.
“But,” said Sims, “it’s not just the exhibit that we’re celebrating. It’s the last three years of work that we’ve done.”
