The story of America is the story of the struggle to expand human freedom.
Past to Present: Teaching Vinegar Hill Today
How a Collaborative Design Lab Transformed Student Learning- By Rachel Morrison, a U.S. History and dual enrollment teacher at Goochland High School in Goochland County, Virginia. Ms. Morrison was named the 2026 Virginia Regional Teacher of the Year for Superintendent’s Region 1. Last November, I had the opportunity to participate in a Design Lab experience hosted by the Shockoe Institute and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center centered on the history of Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill neighborhood.
Shockoe Institute Presents: An Evening at the ICA
As part of the Shockoe Institute Presents series, An Evening at the ICA brought artists, scholars, and community members together for live performance and conversation that explored the enduring impact of American racial slavery and the creative work of imagining more just futures. Hosted in partnership with the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, the evening reflected the Shockoe Institute’s commitment to putting history to work—inviting participants to learn, reflect, and act through interdisciplinary exchange and artistic expression.
Building the Shockoe Institute: Our Panel at the VMHC Virginia History Symposium
Our presentation, Building the Shockoe Institute: New Directions in Public Discourse on the History and Legacy of Slavery, was moderated by Shockoe Institute President & CEO Marland Buckner. Buckner led L’Rai Arthur-Mensah, the Executive Account Director at Local Projects and the Institute’s design partner, Dr. Justene Hill Edwards, an award-winning author and associate professor of history at the University of Virginia (UVA), and Dr. Gregg Kimball, the Shockoe Institute’s Senior Consulting Historian, in a wide-ranging panel about the Institute’s exploration of the evolution and enduring impact of American racial slavery and, most importantly, ways to learn, reflect, and act in our own ways, and in so doing, improve our civic life.
History with History Teachers: Our First Mobile Learning Lab Workshop in Alexandria
Equality. Personal liberties. Religious freedom. The separation of church and state. These foundational principles are considered essential parts of our liberal democracy.
The Shockoe Institute Presents: A Conversation with Jerome Copulsky
Equality. Personal liberties. Religious freedom. The separation of church and state. These foundational principles are considered essential parts of our liberal democracy.
Our purpose: Revealing the Enduring Impact of American Slavery on our Shared American Experience
The Shockoe Institute was created to reveal the enduring impact of American racial slavery on our shared American experience—and to put that history to work. By connecting rigorous historical scholarship with civic reflection and action, the Institute invites the public to examine how the past continues to shape American life today and how understanding those throughlines can help improve our civic life.
Hallowed Ground
Design perspectives from Local Projects, the world-renowned experiential media firm behind the National 9/11 Memorial in New York and Greenwood Rising in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The Stories We Hope to Tell at The Shockoe Institute
The academic rigor here is unmatched. We are telling some of these stories for the very first time.