Photo: YouTube
There is an Elephant in the civic living room of Charlottesville, Virginia.
A year ago the following report on an element of this issue was published: c-ville.com/why-i-did-it-county-resident-confesses-to-taking-slave-auction-block/
This month marks twenty years of the City of Charlottesville’s failure to visibly acknowledge its historic Slave Block and Slave Market. Surrounding towns have done so. Monticello and the University of Virginia have memorialized their enslaved workers. Our County Supervisors have removed a 25-foot Rebel statue. They removed the two civil war cannons symbolically holding our town’s center hostage to the Past.
For more than six months our Honor-Slave-Block Citizen Group has urged City Council to rectify this dereliction of responsibility. We proposed the Slave Market building be acquired as an educational museum. We applied for a Virginia Historic Marker. The city refused to approve it.
Now, using the exact wording approved by the City a year ago for a temporary Marker – which was never installed – our Advocacy Group has made a simple public Marker. It is a Placeholder until the City installs a larger one.
We regret that City Manager John Blair has ignored our multiple requests for bolting it to the sidewalk. We have entered Black History Month. On Friday, February 5, we will announce at Court Square the public presentation of our Marker to the City.
Respectfully and with thanks… Honor-Slave-Block Advocacy Group
Wording of our Presentation: There is a stain on this corner caused by failure to honor the more than 20,000 enslaved workers who built Albemarle and Charlottesville in the centuries before 1865. We believe White silence equals violence. Until twenty and more years ago there was a visible memorial on the wall of this slave market building. It was stolen or removed. Since that time our city has continued unable to rectify the need for a historic Marker here. A group of civic-minded citizens has funded this dignified memorial marker. We offer it as a PLACEHOLDER until the city that we love moves forward with its larger memorialization plan here at Court Square. We request our City Manager to accept and anchor to the sidewalk today these words provided by the City Council’s Historic Resources Committee.
Source: Richard H. “Freeman” Allan III
HSB/Slave Museum Secretary; Author; Researcher; Iconologist; Social Justice Activist — Richard H. “Freeman” Allan III – 1425 Trailside Ct #102 Charlottesville VA 22911 [email protected] 434-409-8666 Independent Scholar-Virginia Foundation for the Humanities; Author; Researcher; Iconologist; Environmental Activist
