The Devil's Half Acre

Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the little-known story of Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who was forced to bear the children of a brutal slave trader and to live on the grounds of his slave jail. The jail was known as the "Devil's Half Acre." When the man who held her in slavery died, Mary inherited the jail. She turned it into "God's Half Acre," a school where Black men could pursue their dreams. That school still exists today as Virginia Union University, one of the first Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States. The book follows a life lived at the margins of the American slave trade and brings Mary Lumpkin into the light. It is an account of her resilience on the road to freedom, her historic contributions and the legacy that endures after her.