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Date: | Wed, 22 May 2013 12:35:21 -0400 |
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Note for the Virginia History online forum
Some members might possibly want to read my op-ed in today's Newport News
Daily Press. The editors headlined it "Fort Monroe self-emancipators'
courageous act changed the world."
http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-nws-oped-corneliussen-0522-20130521,0,7676873.story
(Please contact me off-list if you want to read the 630-word piece but can't
get access: Corneliussen [[at]] Verizon.net)
The op-ed disputes the widespread but deficient--not to say racially
obtuse--interpretation of the 1619-to-1861 Fort Monroe freedom story. That
interpretation focuses not on enslaved Americans who acted, but on a white
general who reacted. The op-ed proposes that national media attention is the
only hope now--an admittedly very long-shot hope--for saving this national
treasure's Chesapeake Bay sense of place. That's of course a long shot in
large part because the National Trust for Historic Preservation--forced to
pick its battles, and choosing to live down from its high-stature name in
this matter--withholds affirmation that costly, counterproductive
development on the Fort Monroe bayfront would cause harm like that
imaginable from costly, counterproductive development on the hillside
leading up to Thomas Jefferson's house. It's a very long shot, but still:
reporters do pay attention to Virginia's 2013 elections, to Big Money in
politics, to the Civil War sesquicentennial and to post-superstorm-Sandy
coastal-overdevelopment folly. So although I'm not banking on it, such
attention could conceivably still shame Virginia into reconsidering the
once-in-a-century stewardship failure that the commonwealth is grimly
cementing for the coming thousand years.
Thanks.
Steven T. Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia
http://www.fortmonroenationalpark.org/
http://www.physicstoday.org/daily_edition/science_and_the_media
http://tjscience.org/
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