This free, one-hour walking tour of downtown Charlottesville focuses on people enslaved by Thomas Jefferson who later helped build the city after leaving Monticello. The Fossett, Hemings, West, Bell, and Scott families faced the challenges of separation as free family members struggled to maintain relationships with their enslaved kin. For generations they and their descendants navigated the color line and triumphed in creating community despite the harsh realities of racism all around them. The program is based on the seminal research of Lucia “Cinder” Stanton, Shannon Senior Historian Emeritus at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) that owns and operates Monticello.

The tour meets at Court Square near the marker of Charlottesville's slave auction block and ends at York Place.