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We must never, ever forget

By Staff | Jun 15, 2020

No one knows with certainty how many human beings — men, women and children — were forced to stand on the 800-pound stone that remained planted in the ground on a street corner in Fredericksburg, Virginia for 176 years. What we do know is that each and every one of them was treated like an animal. Each and every one was sold and bought.

They were enslaved black Americans. The stone was an auction block used solely to display human beings being bid on by white people.

Last week, Fredericksburg officials had the stone removed. The local NAACP chapter had called for the action in 2017. Fredericksburg City Council voted in 2019 to remove it, but a lawsuit filed in an attempt to block the action delayed it until last week.

Of course, the key consideration regarding the stone was the pain it caused modern-day black residents of the area. Removing it, for that reason alone, was the right thing to do.

But in seeking such action, the NAACP put its finger on why the stone should be on public display, as is the plan. It is to be placed in a museum — with accompanying material explaining and, in pictures, portraying the barbarity of slavery.

The stone was a relic of ” a time of hatred and degradation,” the NAACP pointed out.

Precisely.

We Americans must never, ever be allowed to forget the terrible evil that existed for far too long in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Relics such as the slave auction block are critical reminders of tolerated, even encouraged, violent bigotry. We must never, ever forget that it existed — and that, among what we hope and pray is an infinitesimally small percentage of people today, racism persists.

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