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/ ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html