A new documentary on the Virginia Theological Seminary’s reparations program premiered earlier this month at a private screening in Alexandria, Virginia.
The film, Bridging Ground: A Story of Sin, Grace, and Repair, follows the seminary’s effort to confront its legacy with slavery. Founded in 1823, the seminary was built and sustained in part by enslaved people, who completed construction projects on campus, worked agricultural plots, and prepared meals for White faculty and students. During the Jim Crow era, the seminary continued to employ Black staff under segregated and low-wage arrangements. In 1951, Virginia Theological Seminary admitted its first Black student, John T. Walker, who would go on to become the Bishop of Washington.
In 2019, Virginia Theological Seminary established a $1.7 million reparations endowment fund and began to search for living descendants of the enslaved people who labored on campus. Less than two years after the endowment was created, the seminary made its first annual payments; each verified descendant received $2,100. Since then, the endowment has continued to grow, reaching some $2.8 million by June 2025. The fund now supports more than 200 descendants annually.
Bridging Ground, made by filmmaker and Alexandria native Mark Farkas, will have its first public screening on September 23 at the Lettie Pate Center in Alexandria.
