Henry "Box" Brown Memorial (Richmond, Virginia)

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Dublin Core

Title

Henry "Box" Brown Memorial (Richmond, Virginia)

Subject

Subject (Topic)
Abolitionists--United States
Antislavery movements--United States
Mid-Atlantic United States
Public art
Public sculpture
Slavery--Emancipation

Subject (Name)
Brown, Henry "Box," 1816-1897

Subject (Object Type)
Commemorative sculpture

Description

The memorial commemorates Henry "Box" Brown's harrowing journey to freedom. On March 23, 1849, with the assistance of James Caesar Anthony Smith, a freedman and white abolitionist, Samuel Alexander Smith, Brown shipped himself in a two-by-three-foot crate marked "dried goods" from Richmond to Philadelphia. Brown would later become a well-known antislavery activist, attempting to assist other enslaved people to escape in crates.

The memorial includes a bronze crate meant to resemble the wooden one that Brown used. The crate is open and an outline of a crouching human figure is inscribed on the back panel of the box. An informational placard is sited near the sculpture, which details the history of slavery in Richmond and Brown's escape.

Creator

Unknown

Source

Photographs by Renée Ater

Date

2001

Contributor

City of Richmond, Richmond City Council Slave Trade Commission, and Venture Richmond.

Rights

City of Richmond, 900 East Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia, 23219

Format

JPEG

Language

English

Type

Visual Arts-Sculpture

Coverage

Box Brown Plaza, 1498 Dock Street, Richmond, Virginia, 23219, United States

Has Part

Inscriptions on five sides of box:
"Buoyed by the prospect of Freedom...I was willing to dare even death itself."

"The idea flashed across my mind of shutting myself up in a box, and getting myself conveyed... to a free state."

"I laid me down in my darkened home of three feet by two feet."

"My friends...managed to break open the box, and then came my resurrection from the grave of slavery"

"I arose a free man"

An inscription on the stone base:
"In a wooden crate similar to this one, Henry Brown, a Richmond tobacco worker, made the journey from slavery to freedom in 1849"

Extent

36 x 33.6 x 24 in. (91.44 x 85.34 x 60.96 cm.)

Medium

Bronze

Rights Holder

Renée Ater

Still Image Item Type Metadata

Original Format

Sculpture

Physical Dimensions

36 x 33.6 x 24 in. (91.44 x 85.34 x 60.96 cm.)

Citation

Unknown, “Henry "Box" Brown Memorial (Richmond, Virginia),” Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past, accessed March 28, 2024, https://www.slaverymonuments.org/items/show/1217.

Geolocation