Their wealth was built on slavery. Now a new fortune lies underground.

In Virginia, the land still owned by the Coles family could yield billions from uranium. Does any of that wealth belong to the descendants of the enslaved?

By Julie Zauzmer Weil
December 1, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EST



Clockwise from top left: Isaac Coles, Carole Coles Henry, Edward Coles, Walter Coles V (New York Public Library, Joshua Lott/The Washington Post, Library of Congress, Justin Ide for The Washington Post, Washington Post illustration)

CHATHAM, Va. — The land came first, 5,557 acres of forest purchased two years after the Revolutionary War by a Virginia slaveholder and future congressman. ... The mansion came next — a symbol of fortune and power built by enslaved workers, who spent seven years assembling the stately home brick by brick until it was finally finished in 1825. ... “It’s been occupied by a Walter Coles and his wife ever since then,” says the latest Walter Coles — the fifth of that name — as he sits in the same parlor his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather all sat in before him, recounting the history of Coles Hill as his predecessors look down from portraits on all four walls.

Coles, 84, is one of countless Americans who still benefit from the wealth accumulated by America’s 18th- and 19th-century slaveholders. And his great-great-grandfather, Walter Coles I, and great-great-great-grandfather, Isaac Coles, helped shape the country’s brutal and lucrative system of slavery: They were among the more than 1,800 slaveholders who served in Congress, writing and passing the laws that allowed them to amass their own fortunes on the backs of others. ... More than two centuries later, the descendants of those enslaved at Coles Hill take deep pride in what they’ve achieved in the face of subjugation, segregation and relentless racism. One of them, Carole Coles Henry, a 67-year-old retired administrator for the city of Phoenix, has spent years thinking about the stark differences between the White family with the name Coles and her own Black family with the same name.



Walter Coles, 84 — the fifth of that name — sits in the same parlor where his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather all sat at Coles Hill in Chatham, Va. His wife, Alice, and dog, Leady, are with him. (Justin Ide for The Washington Post)

“It took 225 years for us to get to the point where we’ve got college graduates who now are owning our own homes, who are successfully giving back to society — I’m talking about being able to amass any kind of equitable resources to begin to move into society in a way where we can have a piece of the pie too,” Henry said. “It’s just now, my generation, where all of us are owning homes and being able to send our kids to college and being able to look back on this history and say: What in the world happened here?”

The story of those disparities isn’t over. Buried beneath the ground of Coles Hill lies one of North America’s largest untapped uranium deposits — worth billions of dollars if it could ever be mined. ... The uranium at Coles Hill, which holds the potential to fuel nuclear power plants and rewrite the next chapter of the plantation’s history, remains untouched for now, blocked by Virginia’s state legislature from being extracted because of possible hazards, in a fight that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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About this story: Editing by Lynda Robinson, photo editing by Mark Gail and Mark Miller, copy editing by Vanessa Larson, design by Michael Domine.

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By Julie Weil
Julie Zauzmer Weil covers D.C.'s local government. She has worked at The Post since 2013, including four years covering religion in America. Twitter https://twitter.com/juliezweil