In this thread two days ago, Brent Tarter offered an article from the
Richmond Times-Dispatch that speculated that if the envisioned slavery
museum is being abandoned in Fredericksburg, maybe it should be built in
Richmond instead. Another candidate location is Fort Monroe, as is argued in
the July 7, 2008, op-ed that appears below.
At Citizens for a Fort Monroe National Park (CFMNP.org), we advocate a
revenue-generating, self-sustaining, innovatively structured national park
something like San Francisco's Presidio. It seems to us that Robert F. Engs,
a historian at Penn, is right that Fort Monroe is not just _a_ place where
slavery began to die, but is _the_ place where it began to die. But Fort
Monroe was also part of the beginning of American slavery, nearly a quarter
of a millennium before the self-emancipators James Townsend, Frank Baker and
Sheppard Mallory took the risk of escaping enslavement and sought sanctuary
there following Fort Sumter. So last July 7 in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot,
CFMNP's Scott Butler published this op-ed arguing for a Fort Monroe location
for the slavery museum.
(Note: Anyone within the WHRO PBS Channel 15 broadcast area might want to
plan to watch the Fort Monroe discussion that will take place at 8:30 next
Friday, March 6. Cathy Lewis, the host -- and also the host of a noontime
talk show on the NPR channel 89.5 FM -- has begun her own speculating about
what Scott proposed.)
Fort could house national slavery museum
By SCOTT BUTLER
FIVE YEARS AFTER a ceremonial groundbreaking, construction on the U.S.
National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg has yet to begin. Richmond Mayor
L. Douglas Wilder, the museum's founder, blames the slowdown in fundraising
on his other commitments and the national economy.
Meanwhile, plans are proceeding for the Smithsonian's National Museum of
African American History and Culture, scheduled to open in 2015. But as
columnist Roger Cohen says, "What this $500 million institution will be
remains to be invented."
There is a common and eminently sensible solution to these dilemmas. Fort
Monroe in Hampton, which the U.S. Army will vacate in three years, has
museum-adaptable buildings that are themselves associated with the history
of slavery, and that stand on a spit of land, Old Point Comfort, with an
even longer connection to that history.
In 1619, a British privateer landed at Old Point Comfort and traded its
human cargo of 20 Africans for food, setting in motion the creation of the
American slave system. Two hundred years later, that thriving system
provided much of the work force for the construction of Fort Monroe's moated
stone fortress, intended to protect American freedom.
Then in 1861, shortly after Virginia's secession, three enslaved men escaped
in a small boat from Norfolk and asked for asylum at Union-held Fort Monroe.
The Union commander granted their request on the dubious moral grounds that
they were "contraband of war." But his decision led to thousands of escaped
slaves pouring into the fort and nearby, Confederate burned Hampton, where
they created for themselves an enclave of freedom.
Their actions, in turn, inspired the passage of the Confiscation Acts, the
first legal steps on the path to the Emancipation Act and the Thirteenth
Amendment.
The history of Fort Monroe and Old Point Comfort encapsulates the history of
American slavery from its very beginning to the beginning of its end. And
there is more. The smaller details of this centuries-long story could
provide hooks for an exploration of many aspects of U.S. slavery and its
aftermath. For example:
* African origins: The Africans who arrived in 1619 came from the Portuguese
colony of Angola, where the population was Christian and often literate.
* The economics of slavery: Hampton records show the names of slave owners
and the 600 slaves they hired out to work on Fort Monroe from 1819-1822.
* The Underground Railroad: In 1854, Charles Gilbert liberated himself and
made his way from Richmond to Old Point Comfort, one of the sites on the
Underground Railroad. He hid out beneath the Hygeia Hotel for a month,
eating refuse from the dining room, until he was able to board a ship going
to Philadelphia.
* African-American volunteers in the Union Army: The U.S. Colored 2nd
Regiment Cavalry was organized at Fort Monroe in 1863 and took part in the
siege of Petersburg and Richmond.
* Cultural achievements and aspirations of slaves: It was at Fort Monroe
that some of the first Spirituals, that sublime art form recently designated
a national treasure by Congress, were collected for posterity - among them
"Let My People Go." It was there, too, that Mary S. Peake, a freeborn black
woman, taught "contraband" inhabitants of Hampton to read, just as she had
taught slaves in her home before the destruction of the city.
* The post-war story: In 1865, Fort Monroe became the headquarters of the
Freedmen's Bureau, and in 1868, Hampton Institute -- now Hampton
University -- was founded with the aid of Northern missionaries who had
helped to educate the contrabands during the war. The contraband community
in Hampton flourished economically and culturally until the advent of "Jim
Crow" laws in the late 19th century.
Given this wealth of history, what better place could there be for a
national slavery museum than Fort Monroe? And what better place for a truly
national museum under the auspices of the federal government?
Gov. Tim Kaine should encourage Wilder and the Smithsonian to focus on Fort
Monroe and Old Point Comfort as a Smithsonian Affiliate site. He could share
with them what a dozen Civil War historians said at a symposium organized by
his Fort Monroe Authority. They called the fort "a spiritual Ellis Island"
for African Americans and "sacred ground" in the continuing story of
American freedom.
Scott Butler, of Newport News, is a board member of Citizens for a Fort
Monroe National Park.
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