…visitors to “America’s Front Yard” will see the Founding Fathers honored, but there will be a new emphasis on their personal records as slave-owners. The changes might first be apparent at the Jefferson Memorial; the Trust, even before the renewed debate over Confederate statues, has been planning to raise money to refurbish the National Park Service exhibit accompanying the memorial, which has deteriorated since its installment about 20 years ago.
“We can reflect the momentous contributions of someone like Thomas Jefferson, but also consider carefully the complexity of who he was,” an official with the Trust told the Washington Examiner. “And that’s not reflected right now in the exhibits.”
The Trust has the ability to wield significant influence over the new exhibits, because they provide crucial private funding for the National Mall. The National Park Service faces an $11.49 billion deficit for repairing and maintaining the parks, including an $852 million shortfall for the Mall alone. The Trust works to fill that gap by coordinating fundraising drives from “patriotic philanthropists” and that support projects identified by the NPS as a top priority.
“The Park Service manages the site, and we’ll always be clear on that — but if we are a partner in help bringing private funding to make sure that they’re able to update that exhibit, that’s where we want to be thoughtful vis a vis what has happened, or, sort of, come to an inflection point in the last week,” the official told the Washington Examiner. “That is where we’ll be their partner in bringing together thought leaders and scholars to make sure that that content is really appropriate and thorough for what should be at that particular site.”
Students of American history have long seen in Jefferson a two-toned image of the American founding. Most famously, he authored the Declaration of Independence. Confederate leaders faulted him for regarding slavery as an “evil” institution.
“The prevailing ideas entertained by [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old [United States] constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically,” Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, said in his infamous “cornerstone” speech shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. “It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time.”
Can we get updates on the memorials of historic black figures?
Instead of reiterating what the cultural norms were, that slavery of every race was the contemporary way of life, let’s update the plaques of, say Martin Luther King, with statistical information on how blacks are doing.
Let’s detail the incarceration rate, the welfare rate, the illiteracy rate, the murder rate, the single parent household rate as compared to when King was alive.
My belief is that this current movement is just a way to obfuscate how dismal blacks are performing as a demographic, and no amount of landscape grooming is going to do a thing to remedy it.
They’ll start with statues, move to books……then people……
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
The mob has taken over, sad.
The Trust should build a monument to the Africans who captured and sold their black brothers to Muzz slave traders.
Enough is enough! The left is being manipulated by their “leaders” in this folly to take their eye off the fact they can’t win an election.
This is mob rule plain and simple.
A visit to Mount Vernon or Monticello includes an abundant amount of focus on the fact that Washington and Jefferson had slaves. It’s almost become the sole purpose there with other historic facts (Founder of the country? Bueller, Bueller, Bueller…)as a side show.
I get it. I GET IT!!!
DO NOT! I repeat DO NOT throw away United States currency which contains images of slave owners. Send them all to me for proper disposal.
Regarding the MLK memorial, when we update it, let’s be sure to include the names of the reverend’s extra-marital lovers. Because we must be honest or something.
it makes no sense to appease these so called offended persons. There is nothing in the constitution that indicates that you have the a right to be unoffended. Back down now and we will be trying to placate every little micro minded complaint.
MLK’s ties to the Communist Party USA would make a nice addition to the Chicom statue
CBS Sunday Morning had a segment this weekend talking about “cyberbullying”. They confused that word with doxxing.
The crux was that some Liberals In Good Standing have gotten hurt so, like, stop it you guys.
They tried to paint that former CEO who berated the cashier at a Chik-fil-A drive thru as a victim of cyberbullying.
The Left is already disappearing people. You better be anonymous or they will doxx you to an employer post haste.
“obfuscate”?!?
There you go, using all those raaaacist White words.
I say we erect a 300 ft statue of Harriett Tubman on the mall in DC. She’s the kind of ex slave we all could learn a lesson from. Republican, and human rights hero.
I sure as hell hope there are no statues of Jesse Jackso or Al Sharpton to be found. Despicable men who have done more to harm people of their race that anyone whos statues have come into play.
By all means. Lets make everybody in the country wear a little badge on their chest listing the worst, most embarrassing things they ever in their lifetimes did so all the world can judge them by those things alone. Friggin morons!
They have already done this at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, and at Monticello. They have done this at the historic homes that tours are given in, they have done this at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, they are in the process of “tweaking” EVERY SINGLE historic site, large and small, to place the focus on the bad slaveholder white people, and glossing over the profound accomplishments. They now use the term “enslaved people”. Even the museum in Plymouth MA was dissing the original settlers as being wealthy privileged people who came here strictly to exploit. That was six or seven years ago I was there – they have mannequins all dressed in the richest of fabrics, highest fashion of that period as the example of how the pilgrims REALLY dressed for the ship ride over.
The people who fund things – philanthropists – and donors, control the narrative, or else the funds and fund-raising stops cold. OUR HISTORY IS BEING BROUGHT UP AND CORRUPTED.
Last time I went to Williamsburg there was a long lecture about who could vote and who couldn’t, who could be in the House of Burgesses and who couldn’t….on and on…. I KNEW all that garbage! I knew it by the time I was 6! I was horrified that we had ever had slaves where I lived in Maryland and worried that I might become one myself! Pilgrims in the richest of fabrics? Hogwash! They believed in labor and they had to dress to run farmers. Are you going to tell me that the people who rode connestoga wagons wore satin and lace too?
Robert E Lee was a great man and when the South lost freedom and states rights lost