Williamsburg Full Story of America's 250th Private Tour

The restored buildings and interpreted streets of Colonial Williamsburg tell one version of 18th-century life. This tour asks what those same streets looked like for the roughly half of Williamsburg's population who were enslaved. Your guide begins here, reframing a familiar place.

laved people, determined their status, and punished resistance. Your guide examines how the legal system both reflected and enforced slavery, and what that meant for the people who stood before it.

The Virginia legislature debated taxation, liberty, and independence in this building. They also made legislative decisions about slavery that shaped the lives of thousands. The same men who wrote about freedom also wrote laws that denied it. Your guide holds both truths at once.

They were also enslavers. This house offers a close look at the daily texture of colonial life — and at the enslaved people whose labor made that life possible, whose names are now being recovered and remembered.