For nearly 100 years, Robert E. Lee's 10,000-pound monument rode high over the city of Charlottesville, Virginia. Now, it's been melted into bronze slabs and another memorial in town has risen to national prominence.It's on the University of Virginia campus, titled the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers. It stands as the antithesis to the Confederacy, honoring the slaves forced to work at the university in the 1800s as carpenters, blacksmiths, roofers, stone carvers and other back-breaking trades.
"All these men, women, and children lived with dignity, resisted oppression, and aspired for freedom. For more than four decades, the entire University was a site of enslavement," according to the UVA President's Commission on Slavery. "Now, we’re confronting our past, uncovering new knowledge, and using that knowledge to teach, heal, and shape the future."
That same monumental transformation in thinking is playing out across dozens of states in the USA, as communities from Alabama to Alaska rethink who the true heroes were from their pasts. The result is memorials and renaming of historic places that pay homage to honorees who, not so long ago, would have been seen by some community leaders as too obscure or too underprivileged to merit such recognition.
"It is exciting to see local visionaries are being celebrated for the role that they have supported in their local community," said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Fund, after seeing Sojourner Truth memorialized in Akron, Ohio.
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Poster Comment:
This all seems a bit racially partisan to me, let me know what you think in the comments section. :)