Healing

Other Healing Memorials ...

The issues of black slavery in the United States and more importantly, its grand legacy to today's citizens are much more relevant than many realize. Although black slaves are no longer alive, today's 35-year old black men and women were born to a society that did not by law accord them the same rights as their white peers. These black citizens' parents lived their adult lives under legalized segregation. And on the other side of the same coin, their white counterparts have enjoyed superior access rights to this society's offerings, including education and employment without interruption for hundreds of years.

Despite the fact that legalized slavery and segregation ended with the passing of judicial rulings and governmental legislation, the generation-to-generation legacy of both criminal acts is so deeply embedded in the psychology of everyday life in the United States that it seems unreasonable to expect those most deeply affected by this legacy to just "get over it" or for anyone to just "move on" with their lives. Most of us try to do this but we pay a heavy price. Too little time has passed since legalized segregation ended in the United States for there not to be even the smallest acknowledgment from the "powers that be" of the extended humiliation which slavery wrought on a significant portion of the U.S. population.

Obstructions towards the effort to bring national recognition to the issue of black slavery in The United States, in the form of restitution or memorial have existed simultaneous with the ideas for recognition. As recited in a New Yorker magazine article entitled The African American Century, the time line is indeed short when one connects the African-American of today with his slave ancestor of the mid-19th century United States. Yet it is in fact time, or rather timing that seems to be the chief culprit in the fight for any form of national, memorialized recognition of the black slave in the United States.

Though it may seem that slavery was long ago, the aforementioned article makes the point that when the 20th century began, most adult African-Americans were former slaves and the continuance of segregated conditions for most blacks made the connection between past and present quite short. Still, it seems that the memory of slavery and segregation for blacks in The United States has become so painful and bitter that forgetting and "moving past" this historical fact is easier for most Americans and their leaders to do.

So far in the United States, there exists no national expressions of memory or honor for black African slaves and their descendents. Recent plans for a national memorial/museum have been thwarted by the United States Congress every year since 1989. Today, while plans for the construction of a new building for deserving groups such as the Native American population and new memorial/museums for the victims of the Holocaust exist, no such structure is planned for the victims of slavery in the United States.

It therefore becomes the aim of this project to envision and create a fitting memorial and museum which will offer the cleansing ritual to and honor the victims and victors of the Conflict of Slavery in the United States.

Long ago the earth indeed was painfully cut. It must be time by now for healing to begin.