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https://www.npr.org/2024/04/21/1244899635/civil-war-confederate-statue-markers-sign-history>
'The sound of the party filters across the mansion's lawn long before you see
it: Dozens of guests spill out onto the front porch of the stately Fendall Hall
in Eufaula, Alabama.
It's an engagement party, and past the people drinking white wine in the main
hall is one of the home's historians, Susan Campbell.
She swings open the door to the expansive backyard.
"They had, like, 5 acres or so," Campbell says of the former owners, the
Young-Dent family. They built the house in the late 1850s.
But you might already know this, because planted in the front yard of this
historical home is a large, black-and-gold, square metal historical marker with
the seal of the Alabama Historical Commission — and it says so.
Edward Brown Young was a "banker, merchant and entrepreneur," it says. He
"organized the company which built the first bridge" in Eufaula, and his
daughter married a Confederate captain in the "War Between the States."
What the marker doesn't mention, however, is that Young was a cotton broker,
one of the most powerful men in the slave trade. Nor does it mention that he
owned nine slaves, according to the federal 1860 census.
And while the sign claims the company he organized built the bridge, that
bridge, spanning the Chattahoochee River, was actually designed, managed and
built by a slave named Horace King, a renowned and gifted engineer, along with
a large group of enslaved men.
Campbell says she'd like to see more of this information included.
"But that's because I'm a Northerner, not a Southerner," she says. She moved to
the South 20 years ago from Michigan. She says most people she knows here
wouldn't agree with her.
"I mean, they know," she says, glancing over at the revelers on the porch.
"They know it. But [they] don't necessarily want to be reminded."
That's the difficult thing about the truth. It's just not as fun to throw
parties in places where terrible things happened.'
Via Muse.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
