The memorial proposal
If Germany can have their Holocaust Memorial to the murder of six million European Jews during World War II in their nation’s capital Berlin, the United States can have our National Slavery Memorial in our nation’s capital, Washington, District of Columbia on the National Mall.
For the reasons stated by those who struggled against slavery in the American colonies and territories before the Revolutionary War and in the States and territories of the United States after the Revolutionary War, it is fitting and proper for the people of the United States to dedicate, erect, and solemnize a memorial to the people who were captured in Africa, survived the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World and enslaved in the United States, as well as their many offspring prior to and subsequent to the nation’s founding in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence.
Photo by Peter Thalheim/Photo of part of slavery memorial on University of North Carolina Campus, Chapel Hill, NC
An imperfect revolution
The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence states: “[w]e hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness __.” Slavery continued through our founding in 1776 to the drafting of our Constitution in 1787, which set forth the end of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1787 plus twenty-one years to the year 1808 at Article 1 Section 9 to wit: [t]he Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight [1808].” The Act of 1807 outlawed the African slave trade, effective January 1, 1808.
The Slave Power, however, did not stop or accept limits on the expansion of chattel slavery. Through the Missouri Compromise and the ability to achieve manumission, the purchase of an enslaved person’s freedom through the payment of money, or the release of a person from slavery by the slave owner, free states built a legal system supportive of freedom and to provide for the liberation of enslaved persons. The “Dred Scot” decision of 1857, however, blew that to smithereens and stated that any persons descended from Africans, whether slave or free, were not citizens of the United States. That meant that the children of President Thomas Jefferson, our third president, and scrivner of the Declaration of Independence and Sally Hemings of African descent were ruled not to be citizens!
Thereafter, in accepting the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination to run for U.S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln stated in 1858:
- A house divided against itself, cannot stand.
- I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
- I do not expect the Union to be dissolved–I do not expect the house to fall– but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
- It will become one thing or all the other.
- Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new–North as well as South.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was born a slave but escaped as a young man to freedom in 1838 and became one of the leading orators against slavery. His mastery of the English language and talent as an abolitionist is exhibited in his letter To My Old Master, Thomas Auld, that even after all of the depravities inflicted on slaves with stolen wages, placement on a ledger as property, denying the right to read or write, clothing women scantily and coarsely, whipping, raping, denying all dignity and virtue, “[t]here is no roof under which you [Thomas Auld] would be more than safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. I should esteem it a privilege to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.”
The poison of the Slave Power and slavery led to the Civil War from 1861-65.
To memorialize the countless slaves who perished on the journey from Africa and the countless slaves who suffered and died under the lash of slavery in the United States, it is fitting and proper to erect the National Slavery Memorial on the National Mall between the Washington obelisk and the Lincoln Memorial, who was martyred by the Slave Power.
Online Registry of Donors to the NSM
In addition, we should use this opportunity to create a mechanism to bring financial support to our nations’ Historically Black Colleges and Universities through an Online Registry of Donors to the National Slavery Memorial. After the killing of George Floyd, an African-American citizen, in May, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, demonstrations occurred across the United States. Black Lives Matter signs appeared at demonstrations, on bumper stickers, in apartment windows, on t-shirts and online. Many suggested that they supported the black community in the United States by repeating that phrase yet nothing substantive happened. In a country with more than 330 million citizens and countless corporations, not-for-profits and foundations wanting to do right, it is suggested that we can put our money where our mouth is by donating to this proposed Online Registry of Donors to the National Slavery Memorial, where a citizen could post their name and the name of their children or a corporation could post its name in support of the NSM, for as little as $1. This would only be created after the United States Congress and the President have authorized the NSM.
It is conceivable that so many citizens, corporations and not-for-profits such as Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, General Motors, IBM, Meta, Alphabet, Netflix, PayPal, Lockheed Martin, Harvard University, Stanford University and Middlebury College would annually donate so much money which would far exceed that needed to design, permit and build the NSM. This would result in hundreds of millions of dollars going to our HBCUs based on their student enrollment in 2019 before the start of COVID lockdowns. This will allow citizens and corporations to put their money where their mouths are.
The Case for the National Slavery Memorial and Aid to our HBCUs
This book explains the rationale for the NSM and Aid to our HBCUs
https://fultonbooks.com/books/?book=the-case-for-the-national-slavery-memorial-and-aid-to-our-hbcus