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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsConfederate monuments manipulate history
ANA LUCIA ARAUJO
ON 8/16/19 AT 6:00 AM EDT
... Visitors to Fort Monroe, the historic site where the first Africans arrived on the shores of Virginia in 1619, will no longer see the name of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, displayed across its famous archway.
Removing Davis' name is an important rejection of the manipulation of history. The individuals behind the archway sought to fulfill their political agenda by honoring a secessionist government, promoting white supremacy and denying the realities of slavery in the United States. Confederate monuments don't preserve "our history," like some falsely argue. They instrumentalize the past to maintain a nostalgia for a white ethnostate in the public space. And as long as they stand on public grounds, this nation will never heal from its painful past with slavery.
The creation of Jefferson Davis Memorial Park and installation of the controversial archway bearing his name did not occur until the 1950snot coincidentally when African Americans were fighting for equal legal and civil rights. The United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group responsible for the creation of many Confederate monuments unveiled during the Jim Crow era, spearheaded the initiative ...
Here's the real history: Located in Hampton, Virginia, Fort Monroe comprises Old Point Comfort, the spot where the first documented group of enslaved Africans brought from West Central Africa were disembarked in August 1619. The site embodies the birth of slavery in colonial North America, but it is also a symbol of freedom. During the Civil War, it was a station for Union troops, where enslaved men, women and children sought shelter to escape slavery ...
https://www.newsweek.com/no-confederate-monuments-dont-preserve-history-they-manipulate-it-opinion-1454650
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)Doing so makes it very evident that Mexico and the Caribbean are part of North America. A brief viewing of history shows that some native/indigenous peoples in the Americas kept slaves who were captured in raids or battle. When the Spanish landed in the Caribbean in 1492 they began their
repressive treatment/enslavement of the natives.
In the 16th century/1500s the first Africans were brought as slaves to the Portuguese and Spanish colonies in Brazil, the Caribbean, Mexico and Florida. With this information we can see that African slaves brought to the English colony of Virginia in the 17th century/1619 was not the beginning of slavery in colonial North America but a continuation of an already established practice.
It's good to get our facts straight. In the small bit of research I did so I could write this accurately I can see that slavery is a world-wide problem that can stand a lot of study and it still exists today.
As far as people in the southern US erecting monuments to celebrate their defeat in a brutal war over support for the heinous practice of slavery, I'm sure there's a lot of ruinous psychology and behavior involved in the past and certainly in the present.