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America's Failure to Preserve Historic Slave Markets

• afarrell 12y ago
  > ...that it is simply inappropriate to build an entertainment district on top of a place where human beings were once bought and sold. I appreciate the importance of remembering the fact that some of my ancestors were bought, sold, separated from their families, raped, beaten, and kept from reading. But to say that all sites where this was carried out must be historically preserved would mean claiming a huge amount of central urban real estate given how enmeshed the institution was throughout the economy of the American south. Much like the French and Germans have a right to wind-surf on Omaha beach (which they do), black, white, and mixed-race folks in the south have a right to dance, work, run businesses, and live their lives amidst their history.