Virginia Theological Seminary

The Virginia Theological Seminary, the largest Episcopal seminary in the country, was built on slavery in the most literal sense: enslaved people constructed and maintained its Alexandria campus, including Aspinwall Hall, and worked it before and after the Civil War. In 2019 the seminary created a $1.7 million reparations endowment, and in 2021 it began making cash payments to identified descendants of those enslaved laborers, among the first institutions in the country to do so. It stands here as both a beneficiary, a seminary built by enslaved hands, and a rare example of an institution putting money toward repair.