When Wanda Tucker was young, she had no idea where her family came from.
“Like many African-Americans, it was almost a pointless question,” she said.
Her family kept an oral history that traced its lineage to some of the first people of African descent brought to English-speaking North America – but any more than that was obscured.
“We knew their names – Isabella, Anthony and baby William – but there were so many pieces missing from the story.”
Over the years, the work of historians, journalists and genealogists helped fill in the gaps.
Now, standing on the land that her ancestors first stepped on in 1619 and staring out toward the land they were taken from, Tucker has realized a kinship connection stolen from generations of her family over more than 400 years.
“I identify myself as an Angolan-American,” Tucker said. “Can you imagine more people saying ‘I’m Angolan-American, I’m Ghanaian-American,’ and the power of how that can help people take pride in where their family originated?”
The Fort Monroe Authority, which is in charge of the landing site of those first African people brought to Virginia, plans to build a memorial commemorating them. Tucker hopes the memorial can give a face to the history.
"Where it all began"
The African Landing Memorial at Old Point Comfort has been years in the making. The first statue is expected to be installed sometime after initial work is completed on the site in 2025.
It acknowledges where, in 1619, the first African people brought in bondage to what would become the United States were offloaded. Hundreds of captives from Angola were taken from the West African nation by a Spanish ship headed to Mexico, before English privateers attacked and stole upwards of 50 of those captives. Only 32 captives survived to come ashore in Virginia and be traded for provisions.
Retired Hampton University historian Bill Wiggins called the point of arrival “ground zero” for what the United States would become.
“This is where it all began, so-called American civilization,” Wiggins said. “For better or worse.”
Talk of a memorial in Hampton arose as early as the 1990s, with early proposals referring to a monument. Work toward that goal began in earnest around 2008, according to Wiggins.
“A number of us got together, along with Calvin Pearson, we were founding members of Project 1619,” Wiggins said. “It was determined at that point in time that we would like to commemorate, to memorialize those Angolans, those Africans who were kidnapped and brought against their will to the Virginia colony.”
Created in 2008, Project 1619 is a nonprofit organization with a mission to tell the true history about the first African people taken to Virginia – and their true point of arrival at what is now Hampton.
In 2012, Wiggins and others from the project met with Fort Monroe Authority CEO Glenn Oder. The decommissioned Army installation was transferred to the state authority in 2011, and Oder was hired that same year.
Oder liked the idea, and Wiggins said Project 1619 began seeking donations to fund the memorial.
“It was a very, very far-fetched goal, as we found out,” Wiggins said. “You needed millions of dollars, and the grassroots community, of course, did not have millions of dollars to contribute.”
“We had momentum”
Oder said fundraising began heating up in 2018 when Gov. Ralph Northam visited Fort Monroe. A former colleague in the General Assembly, Oder said Northam wanted to see the memorial become reality.
“He ended up putting $500,000 in the budget to get the project started,” Oder said.
From there, the Authority began to take the lead in planning efforts.
Oder said he reached out to Project 1619 and other groups like the Contraband Historical Society and the William Tucker 1624 Society, as well as scholars from Hampton University and Norfolk State University.
“We began to create a community that would focus on where the memorial would be and why it would be located there,” Oder said.
Wanda Tucker, whose brother is the president of the William Tucker 1624 Society, said the process was “open” and didn’t try to fence stakeholders in when sharing their feedback.
“It was a long process and a very deliberate and conscientious effort to make sure that all the things were put in place that we were trying to indicate to the American public,” Wiggins said.
A competition led to the selection of Florida-based sculptor Brian Owens to create the memorial. The concept grew with time and input, including multiple sculptures and a park space that extends into the roadway.
“It became very important to us that we would design a memorial that would tell the truth,” Oder said. “Where people could come and have solemn remembrance, or groups could gather and have a commemoration.”
The greater scope also led to greater cost for the memorial and associated groundwork. Estimates put the total price tag around $9 million. The finish line still seemed distant, until American Rescue Plan Act funds intended to shore up the tourism industry during the COVID pandemic added another $6 million to the pot.
“All of a sudden, we had momentum,” said Oder.
The final $2.5 million was added into the state budget under Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and the Authority is actively seeking contractors to tackle the site work ahead of the memorial’s installation.
Oder expects that work to wrap in 2025, with installation of the first statue to begin after. He hopes the memorial sparks reflection and a deeper understanding of the story of the United States.
“The memorial is a storyline, and the storyline actually starts in Africa,” he said. “It tells about their life in Africa. We talk about the Middle Passage. We talk about resistance.”
"Not pulling punches"
Owens, the sculptor tasked with telling the story, will carve the pieces from clay before a forge duplicates them in bronze.
“It’s taken quite a while, but it’s also given us time to be reflective in the extreme and thoughtful,” Owens said.
He said he approached his early work with a rigor and discipline, stopping at a coffee shop every day to work.
“I just drew, drew, drew, drew, drew,” Owens said. “In the end, the final concept looks absolutely nothing like it – but there was a seed of an idea.”
Owens also made the rounds several times to listen to stakeholders and present ideas for the memorial over the years, homing in on a final product that could meet everyone’s expectations.
“You’re not asking people how they would design it, you’re just asking them questions that they can answer,” Owens said. “You're asking people directly ‘what do you think about this particular depiction of violence? At what point has one gone too far if the sculpture is going to be put in public?’”
The memorial centers around three elements that Owens calls the ark, the figures and the relief – each piece “loaded with information” about the history of those first Africans forcibly taken to Virginia.
“We’re not trying to tell the whole story of the Africans over periods of decades; the panels only go so far,” Owens said. “But that’s not to say that the human mind has to stop there.”
The largest piece, the relief wall, will be the last installed. It will include multiple human faces exhibiting a range of emotions as the story stretches from Africa to Virginia. The relief will include a wall with an opening framing the way across the Atlantic with an arrow pointing the way to Angola.
“There’s a lot of harsh stuff being depicted in the relief,” Owens said. “I tried not to go overboard, but I’m not pulling punches in depicting the condition of the Africans when they were brought here and what they had to go through during the Middle Passage.”
A similar arrow pointing back to Fort Monroe – and other places enslaved Angolans were taken to – has been proposed by officials in Angola, according to Oder.
The ark is the tallest of the elements, featuring “what appears to be a bowl with flames coming out of the top.” Owens said if the other elements are prose, the ark is poetry.
“People are left to determine for themselves what that thing actually represents,” Owens said. “I’m careful not to tell people what it represents to me. It would be nice if people just showed up and discovered this stuff having not been primed by anyone else.”
The figures will be installed first, after site work is completed, a sculpture of a man and a woman holding a baby. The figures are inspired by William Tucker, the first documented person of African descent born in English North America. William is imagined as a baby in his parents’ arms.
“Over a period of time, we began to think of them … as emblematic of the beginnings of a new ethnic group that would, in time, be called African Americans,” said Owens.
As a sculptor in the realist tradition, Owens said the fidelity of the figures can appeal to people on an emotional level due to an ingrained recognition of the human form in one’s mind.
“You’ve got 4 million years of biological history that is operating below the threshold of conscious thought,” Owens said. “[The statue] is not real, but there’s a part of your brain that reacts to it for a moment as if it’s real.”
Reality is exactly what Wanda Tucker wants people to reflect on at the memorial. She hopes the monument can serve to better inform people about the Old Point Comfort site’s history and the humanity of those who lived it.
“The fact that they survived, they endured all of what they did,” Tucker said. “They were human beings that experienced multiple levels of trauma.”
Her family traces its lineage back to William Tucker, and her brother Vincent leads a society focused on researching and documenting the life of William and his descendants.
Tucker said those first Africans taken to Virginia, including her ancestors, possessed a sense of courage, strength and faith for the future – all shown in their parenting children despite the impossibility of ever seeing their home across the Atlantic again.
“I’m sure that they did not have any idea that it was going to get much worse for 200 and plus years before things started to turn around,” she said. “They had a vision of hope, but had no idea what that hope would look like.”
Tucker also sees the memorial, and sharing her family’s story, as a way to honor the ancestors that struggled and persevered so she and others like her could be here today.
“There’s a lot of pain. There’s also hope, there’s also the future,” she said. “We are truly honored and touched that we are participating as one family and looking forward to the participation of many other descendant families coming together to commemorate our ancestors.”
