from Politico Magazine, an article penned by Ben Woffard
"Too often, Americans choose to venerate our Founding Fathers rather than remember the men, women and children they owned - Slaves. And it’s the absence of physical reminders of this ugly history that makes the forgetting of it that much easier.
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| Photo c. 2005 Will Brady |
"There are countless memorials and museums dedicated to our slave-owning founders, but 150 years after the Civil War, there still exists no federally funded museum dedicated solely to the memory of African-American slaves and the system under which they toiled. The mystery of the missing museums, while noted for years, has been revived again by the recent Confederate flag debate.
" There may, however, be a close contender, if only a meager one, for the first federally funded slave memorial: Tucked in a corner of Independence Mall in Philadelphia—home to the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and nearby Constitution Center—lies what its creators say is the country’s only congressionally funded memorial on federal property to explicitly honor some of America’s early slaves.
" The history of the house itself is a microcosm of American origins. Historian, Edward Lawler, Jr. unearthed the forgotten history of the house.
"Lawler’s discovery sparked a fierce debate and public battle—over whether to memorialize the house and the slaves who lived there. The National Park Service, which oversaw the Independence National Historic Park, balked.
"A letter from park superintendent Martha Aikens explained that creating a memorial would inappropriately append the narrative of slavery to an exhibition, the nearby Liberty Bell Center, that was intended to convey the memory of freedom; this, in turn, would cause a “dissonance between the two features, potentially causing confusion for visitors,” Aikens wrote.
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