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Ballpark proposal for a former center of Southern slave-trading stirs strong emotions in Va.

Associated Press
Published | Updated
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    Ana Edwards, the chief opponent of the Shockoe Bottom stadium proposal gestures as she stands in front of historical markers at the Slave Burial Ground in Richmond, Va., Monday, March 31, 2014. A proposal to build a minor league baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, the city’s oldest neighborhood and the center of the once-thriving slave trade, has drawn criticism from some who believe the area is sacred ground and shouldn’t be bulldozed for a ballpark. The city says it will recover and display artifacts related to the slave trade. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) (The Associated Press)

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    Ana Edwards, the chief opponent of the Shockoe Bottom stadium proposal talks about historical markers at the Lumkin Jail historical site in Richmond, Va., Monday, March 31, 2014. A proposal to build a minor league baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, the city’s oldest neighborhood and the center of the once-thriving slave trade, has drawn criticism from some who believe the area is sacred ground and shouldn’t be bulldozed for a ballpark. The city says it will recover and display artifacts related to the slave trade. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) (The Associated Press)

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    This photo provided by the Library of Virginia shows a depiction of the Richmond slave market by Eyre Crowe, who visited the city’s slave-trading center in 1853.The city was a slave-trading center, second only to New Orleans, in the half-century leading to the Civil War. A proposal to build a minor league baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, the city’s oldest neighborhood and the center of the once-thriving slave trade, has drawn criticism from some who believe the area is sacred ground and shouldn’t be bulldozed for a ballpark. The city says it will recover and display artifacts related to the slave trade. (AP Photo/Library of Virginia) (The Associated Press)

RICHMOND, Va. – A ballpark proposed in the slave-trading center of the former capital of the Confederacy has stirred opposition from African-Americans and others in Richmond.

They contend the city's Shockoe Bottom section is "sacred ground" and no place to play baseball.

Opponents heckled Mayor Dwight C. Jones in November when he outlined plans for the $200 million, stadium-centered economic development project in the city's oldest neighborhood.

By some estimates, more 300,000 men, women and children were jailed, bought and sold in the Bottom and shipped throughout the Southern states in the decades leading to the Civil War.

The stadium proposal has unleashed pent-up frustration among those who believe the city has literally buried that shameful chapter of its history.