This book is an amazing account of Mary Lumpkin and her work to transform a Richmond slave jail into what would become HBCU Virginia Union University. Mary Lumpkin was a slave and her story spams through the civil war and into emancipation - its a difficult read but important history that has been overlooked. She was a strong, brilliant, and amazing woman - should be a household name and hopefully this book will help learn more about true American history.

Mary Lumpkin was sold to a Virginia slave trader and was forced to start producing his children when she was 13. The trader operated a jail known as Devil’s Half Acre where enslaved people were held until they were sold. Lumpkin and her children lived at the jail. When the slaveholder died he left his property to Lumpkin and their children. She turned the property over to people who started a school, that eventually became Virginia Union University. She did not “liberate” the jail.

The author obviously put a lot of research into this book. However, very little is actually known about Mary Lumpkin so the book is really more of a general account of slavery than it is about Lumpkin. There is too much speculation in this book for my tastes. The word “perhaps” is used 140 times, and “may have” is used 154 times. That makes me reluctant to count on this book for reliable information. If you want an account of slavery, there are better books. There just isn’t enough known about Lumpkin to fill a book - maybe a magazine article.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

⭐⭐⭐

Well written. Well researched. Fascinating (but incredibly difficult to read) subject. The main issue I had with this book was that I was expecting it to be about "Mary Lumpkin". However, she is really just a side note throughout this book. Very little is known about her and it shows. The author relies on supposition more often than not. That said, I still applaud this author for the incredible amount of research she did.

**ARC Via NetGalley**

I have never heard of Mary Lumpkin before. Now after reading this story, I wonder why I have never heard of her before. Mary has made many achievements, especially for African Americans and should be noted for her achievements. She was an incredible and courageous woman who risked her own life to t many slaves. She deserved to have the same attention as Harriet Tubman. Therefore, this biography shines a light on an important but largely forgotten woman!

The Devil’s Half Acre deals with an aspect of American based slavery that I had never considered, and one of great importance to the history of slavery throughout its history in this country. Richmond Virginia was the center of the slavery trading itself, becoming a crossroads where the human cargo from early ships or traded/sold slaves were bound to new destinations. This is where runaways were sought or brought if found.

Mary was an enslaved black woman who lived in Robert Lumpkin’s house at his slave jail at Devil’s Half Acre. She was mother to five of his children. That is known and acknowledged. Apparently several of these white jailers had many children by enslaved black women under their control. What the author has discovered, through careful and meticulous research over the years, is what happened to some of these women and their children. It’s a fascinating story that adds layers to the hypocrisy that surrounds the entire institution of slavery.

In the course of this book, the story moves from the dominance of Virginia to the rise of the lower South and resulting move of large numbers of slaves also to the lower South. There are stories about the casual destruction of families as either parents or children are sold away. Another section deals with the Civil War in Richmond and what happens to the jails once the slaves have been freed. Mary Lumpkin (yes, she used his name) played a major role in this area, and in the future of her children and former slaves in Virginia.

While there might not be specific facts available for each event in Mary Lumpkin’s life, the author was able to find her on census records, property deeds and family letters. She is also able to see trends for other women like Mary, who lived near her at different times and would have have had similar concerns re: their children, future, safety, etc. The sub-title itself may be somewhat misleading as to how large Mary’s role was, but she did have a role in the future education of black men in Richmond. I believe the extrapolation works here and that Green has made her case.

Recommended reading to obtain a broader outlook on the history of race in the United States.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This was a lot broader of a history book than I was expecting. I was expecting to learn about just one woman's life but the net of this book was spread far. While it was informative I think many people will feel like they were baited and switched with this book. The author should have focused more on the topic that was in his title or made his title more broad.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

As a Historic Fiction book, this book was not what I expected. I thought I was going to learn more about Mary Lumpkin but it was more about similar women, other people, and the time period itself. It was interesting to learn about many of the references and other sources used for this book. With that being said, I felt at times the book swayed away from history and leaned more toward the bias and opinions of the author

Thank you Netgalley and Seal Press for the gifted ebook.

The Devil's Half Acre by Kristen Green takes the story of Mary Lumpkin , a formerly enslaved woman who survived and eventually transformed the slave jail of her former owner into a school which later became Virginia Union University , and uses it to illustrate what life was like for those enslaved in the United States before and during the American Civil War, and in its aftermath.
The book is much broader in scope than I expected from the description and while Mary Lumpkin's story is the central narrative thread that runs through the book, there is a lot of more general social commentary about the time. I was a little perturbed by the repeated use of phrases like "perhaps she felt" , while I understand that accurate historical sources are limited, I would have preferred to have a more concise account based on fact rather than supposition. As might be expected given the subject matter, this is not easy reading , there are many disturbing descriptions of the appalling treatment the enslaved endured.
This is a well researched history book but those who are expecting a more narrative driven biography style book may be a little disappointed.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Fascinating, and an absolute must read for history buffs and women's history readers in particular. This is an aspect of the history of American slavery that I had never heard about, and this book is an outstanding look at the life of a woman who was bold, brave, strong, and persistent in a time when Black women were not allowed to be any of those things.

Green provides more of a social commentary about the history of slavery around Richmond, Virginia than focusing solely on the life of Mary Lumpkin, which makes for a very misleading title.. What she includes about Lumpkin is quite interesting. She envelops it in broad historical sweeps that are distracting, it felt like she was trying to add in every major historical event from colonial times to present. She makes numerous suppositions that are nebulous and vague. I learned more from reading the Yellow Wife.

Did not finish. I was very eager to read the story of Mary Limpkin. However, factual information about her is scarce, so Green instead related stories of similarly enslaved people.
Perhaps historical fiction would have been a better option for telling this story.

This is a harsh book to read about a hard topic. As the author states at the beginning of the book, they are not going to sugarcoat anything about the time period or the people they are writing about. There are quite a few parts of this book that are hard to read and I had to break it into chunks sometimes, just so I could absorb what the author was writing. Even if you think you know about slavery and that era from school or other places, this book really lays bare aspects of slavery that are not talked about enough and what it was like for those enslaved people.
There is frank writing throughout the book about the choices that those who were enslaved made and what they went through that might have factored into those choices. Those who were enslaved had to often make really hard decisions about how they lived and interacted with not only their fellow enslaved people, but also with those who enslaved them and anyone who was not enslaved.
There is really too much in this book to distill it down into one review, but all I can say is that this book is hard and it does not shy away from the history it discusses and it leaves you needing to learn more no matter how hard.
A highly-recommended read, but be prepared for some tough reading.

Ms Green has carefully researched and patched together the story of Mary Lumpkin as best possible given the scarcity of records on enslaved women. She sheds light on the injustices practiced against enslaved families and enslaved women in particular by enslavers. The history of slave trade is laid bare with all its sordid detail. Several figures of speech and terms are explained in the context in which they came to be. An excellent read that particularly bores into the finer details of slave trade mostly in Virginia (where Ms Lumpkin herself was enslaved). We follow her up north and encounter several other contemporaries who, like herself, contributed to pivotal moments in US history. More people should hear the story of the founder of Virginia Union. A great addition to any library's history collection. Ms Green's engaging narrative style makes this a hard book to put down.

The Devil’s Half Acre: The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated The South’s Most Famous Slave Jail by Kristen Green - forthcoming April 2022

Set between 1857 to 1874

I would describe this work as part imagined memoir, part narrative non-fiction.

This is a very powerful account of the horrors of slavery in the American South. Any one who thinks teaching about slavery should be banned in schools as it might make white children feel a sense of shame over these events, should be required to read this book.

Mary Lupkin was born into slavery in the American south, she was sent to an slave jail in Richmond Virginia because she offended the plantation owner’s wife because she was her husband’s daughter with a slave woman. She also helped a slave who she loved escape.

A slave jail was a place for auctions and where owners sent slaves to be punished. Very brutal whippings are depicted.
The owner of the jail takes her for his mistress. They have five children. She hates him but does what she must to survive, earning better treatment by her submission. The speciality of the slave jail was the sale of young girls, called fancy girls, to brothels. Mary is very dedicated to her children and they are educated by a governess.

There is an exciting plot twist when her old love is captured and brought to the jail for punishment. His public flogging day is a festival for local whites and a warning to other slaves.

The closing is very gratifying.

Kristen Green is the author of the New York Times best-seller Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County, which received the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Nonfiction and the People’s Choice Award. A newspaper reporter for two decades, she worked for the Boston Globe, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. She holds a master’s in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. Green lives with her husband and two daughters in Richmond, Virginia.-

The Devil's Half-Acre appeals to the historian who is interested in learning about the community held in the Half-acre, and the beauty and strength that came from that terrible place. Heavy on historical content, this reads more like a social studies text; there's not much build up through narration or character development.

“We will always know little or nothing about the vast majority of enslaved women...” (Annette Gordon-Reed, historian)

'The Devil's Half Acre', by journalist Kristen Green, is about the little known story of Mary Lumpkin, an African-descended enslaved woman who helped free her children and assisted with the founding of a school for Black Americans in Virginia. In Richmond, the Shockoe Bottom is one of the oldest neighbourhoods and also contains a burial ground of African-Americans, which should not come as a surprise. However, the cemetery was where a parking lot rested, and was believed to have been built over the bodies of hundreds of Black Americans between 1750 and 1816. In the mid-1800s, Richmond was second only to New Orleans as a hub for the transatlantic slave trade and auction blocks. Mary Lumpkin, at age 13, was immersed into this atmosphere, separated from her family as a child. As early as age 13, she was violated by her white master and forced to give birth to the first of his children. However, she did not go directly to a plantation. Instead, she was kept in what was known as a jail for enslaved people--a place for the enslaved to be held before or after they were sold. Most of them were destined to be shipped to the Lower South.

One of the reasons for the little known story of Mary Lumpkin and countless other enslaved women is because of the simple truth that wealthy white men were the ones who told the stories, kept the records, managed the businesses, and so on. In other words, they got to decide what was and wasn't present on several kinds of records, and they chose to actively erase the stories of countless Black women, men, and children. Plantation owners often recorded first named of the African-descended enslaved people they purchased, sold, and so on, one of the chief reasons for which was to prevent families from being reunited, in addition to reinforcing the brutal dehumanization they committed. This has made it difficult for historians as well as the descendants of these enslaved people to learn more about their forebears.

The author provides a comprehensive and detailed account of Mary Lumpkin's life, the conditions she grew up in, of how families of enslaved people were separated when they were sold off to different enslavers, and other conditions of chattel slavery. Like many other states, Virginia did not have laws to prevent enslaved children from being taken from their parents. Further on, the author provides accounts of the demand for lighter-skinned African-descended enslaved women and girls rather than those with darker skin, as well as the fetishization that occurred with the white men purchasing these women and calling them "fancy girls." There are also grim and disturbing details about the punishments inflicted on enslaved women and girls who refused to comply with the demands of their white enslavers and overseers, including those who were pregnant.

Overall, while the pacing lags in some areas and the author has issues with consistency of the terminology she says she is going to use throughout the text, 'The Devil's Half Acre' is a crucial addition to the stories of Black women that have been erased in America and one hopes that with the release of this book, more people will become aware of Mary Lumpkin's painful yet remarkable story.

A fascinating and thrilling look at the history behind Sadeqa Johnson’s book The Yellow Wife, published in January 2021.
This book tells the story of Mary Lumpkin the ‘wife’ of a slave trader, and the history of every abused woman, black or white, in America.

“The Devil’s Half Acre” is by Kristen Green. It’s a non-fiction story about the part Richmond, Virginia had in the role of slavery. Yes, my summary differs from the publisher’s summary, but - let me be honest - this is a difficult book for me to review!

If I could give a rating based upon the amount of historical research Ms. Green did for this book, I would - and it would be a very high five stars. She lists an extensive amount of articles, books, and documents she used for background material. She also consulted genealogical records to track movement - so, she did a great job of due diligence. However, because so little is known about Mary Lumpkin, while she’s a common thread in this story, so much is guesswork about her life. There are some facts however - she was an enslaved woman (at the time a young teenager) forced to bear children of Robert Lumpkin, who owned and ran Lumpkin’s Jail in Richmond, VA. Mary outlived Robert Lumpkin and she inherited the land Lumpkin’s Jail had been on (Robert died after the Civil War ended) and, she offered the land and buildings up to become a school, that eventually became Virginia Union University.

For me, sadly, where the overall book falls short is in the overall structure of the book. For instance, a lot of time is spent at the beginning with the author discussing her word choices and why she made those choices. There are ways to do this that don’t take nearly 30 pages to explain to the reader. Because so little is known about Mary Lumpkin, the author uses a lot of qualifiers “maybe Mary Lumpkin did this,” “maybe Mary Lumpkin and Person_name discussed this,” "maybe Mary Lumpkin felt this way," and the etc. So much is unknown that I came to expect assumptions to be mentioned. For instance, why Mary left Virginia and moved to Ohio isn't really known - the author makes some guesses - but I would’ve preferred a straight “Mary moved there and lived with PersonX, but there’s no documentation saying why she made that choice.” Mary is always referred to as “Mary Lumpkin,” which I found a bit awkward to read after a number of pages. Yes, that’s a stylistic choice, but since Mary seemed to be the only Mary in the book, it became annoying after a while. The author had a message to convey with this book - and she delivers it, but at times for me it became mired down in political correctness, “these people good, these people bad,” and leaps in time (example: beginning a discussion occurring in 1840, then including historical information from the 1790s, then jumping to 1900 and then the 1930s before returning to the 1850s) that made it difficult to always keep track of what was happening when.

As a side note, if you have read the historical fiction book "The Yellow Wife," by Sadeqa Johnson, the main character, Pheby Brown, is based upon Mary Lumpkin.