Virginia Richards in Conversation with Dr. Melissa Walker

Join us for an evening with Virginia Richards in conversation with Dr. Melissa Walker. They will be discussing Richards's new book The Inner Passage, a deeply moving photographic and narrative history of a southern waterway that the enslaved were forced to build for mercantile shipping—but which they used to escape slavery.

With gorgeously rich tritone photographs and a hard-bound cover with tip-in, perfect for fine art or history lovers.
Some of the earliest canals in colonial America, referred to as the Inner Passage, were constructed by enslaved people living in the Lowcountry of South Carolina in the early 1700s. In a paradox of history, for over a hundred years enslaved Black people used these canals, constructed for white plantation owners, to travel southward to freedom in Spanish Florida.
In this book, Virginia McGee Richards documents the lost narrative of the Inner Passage through 60 extraordinary photographs of landscapes altered by slavery and portraits of Lowcountry descendants, along with an essay describing her discovery of this untold history. In an accompanying essay, Imani Perry writes about her own journey on the Inner Passage, putting Black resistance to enslavement and Southern history into an immediate context. James Estrin brings decades of insight about photography and the power of visual storytelling to his affecting foreword. Together, these words and images offer a powerful living map of history.

Virginia McGee Richards is a photographer, researcher, and former environmental lawyer whose work explores landscape as a living archive. Born and raised in the Carolinas, she grew up immersed in Southern geographies and rural life—formative experiences that anchor her artistic practice. “Landscapes are like manuscripts,” she notes. “They record, they hold, and they can render histories—even in the absence of documents.”

She belongs to the first generation of American schoolchildren to attend racially integrated public schools following federal desegregation orders—an experience that deeply informed her interest in communities, boundaries, and the layered histories embedded in place.

Dr. Melissa Walker is an award-winning teacher and scholar. Formerly of Converse University, she was their first faculty member to hold the George Dean Johnson, Jr. Chair in History. She is the author or editor of eleven books. Currently, Melissa brings the insights from her years of mentoring, research, leadership, and teaching into her work at Heyday Coaching.

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