[VAcourier] Reconcilliation or Attack?

[Virginia Division SCV Communication List]

  While reconciliation for slavery may be a good thing, these articles
  always seem to try to drive a steak through the heart of the legacy of
  good men like Robert E. Lee who never supported slavery to begin with.



  Richmond unveils statue aimed at slavery reconciliation

By DIONNE WALKER
Associated Press Writer
March 30, 2007
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-sou--slaverystatue0330mar30,0,1589279.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia

RICHMOND, Va. -- With flags from Virginia and Africa whipping overhead, 
Ken Hunt watched white workers put finishing touches on a monument 
targeting slavery's residue--for many in this former Confederate 
capital, still fresh.

"It's supposed to help things out," said Hunt, a Cherokee Indian and 
supervisor at Richmond's slavery reconciliation monument. "I hope that's 
what it does."

Officials Friday unveiled the finished monument, a collection of 
benches, a fountain and a one-ton sculpture of two hugging figures.

Its inscription: "Acknowledge and forgive the past. Embrace the present. 
Shape a future of reconciliation and justice."

"Virginia was not an innocent bystander in the matter of slavery," Gov. 
Timothy M. Kaine told a multiracial crowd gathered at the memorial, 
along a busy corner in downtown Richmond.

"Some expression of apology or regret is ... natural."

The unveiling completed a decade-long effort linking Richmond with two 
other slavery hubs--Liverpool, England and Benin, West Africa--each 
making amends for their hand in the institution.

Matching statues have been placed in all three cities: Liverpool, where 
empty slave ships set sail; Benin, where slaves were captured; and 
Richmond, where slaves were dropped off.

"We're beginning to acknowledge," said Delores McQuinn, who lead 
construction of the memorial through the Richmond Slave Trail 
Commission. "That gain speaks volumes to where we're going."

A triangle of roughhewn benches resembling ship planks encircles the 
13-foot, bronze sculpture. Nearby, a deck spans a rippling fountain, 
symbolizing the treacherous Atlantic crossing made by so many Africans, 
organizers said.

More and more, Virginia is turning to icons, legislation and revised 
history to heal slavery's hurt.

In February, state lawmakers passed a resolution expressing "profound 
regret" for Virginia's role in slavery, which included exporting slaves 
to cotton-rich states along the Mississippi River once fields here dried 
out.

Maryland passed a similar resolution, while Congress and lawmakers in 
Georgia and Missouri are debating comparable measures.

Richmond Mayor and former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder--the grandson 
of slaves--is leading efforts to build a national slavery museum amid 
the Civil War battlefields of Fredericksburg; at Jamestown, where the 
first Africans landed in 1619, organizers of a 400th anniversary 
commemoration of the first permanent English settlement have highlighted 
the role of blacks as well as settlers and native Americans.

In predominantly black Richmond, where towering monuments honor Southern 
heroes like Gen. Robert E. Lee, officials have christened a slave 
walking trail and are considering a less divisive name for the Museum of 
the Confederacy.

Friday, onlookers dabbed away tears before unveiling the simple 
sculpture--two figures, genderless and colorless, embraced in peace.

Yet black community activist Duron Chavis wondered whether it was 
enough. He held a sign urging reparations for slave descendants.

Without atonement, he argued, "How can you look at a rhetorical statue 
or an apology as anything but a mockery of what (we) went through?"
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