This past Saturday I enjoyed the celebration of the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass in downtown Easton. Thank you to the Town of Easton and Talbot County, which both supported and sponsored the event.
Special thanks to the Frederick Douglass Honor Society for organizing a deeply moving, celebratory, and sobering celebration of not just a remarkable man, orator, and leader, but a historic and remarkable story of determination, courage, hope, freedom, and conviction.
However, as I sat in front of the stage on West Street listening to Fred Morsell evoke the presence and spirit of Douglass with a speech made after the victory of the Union and just seven weeks after Lincoln’s death, I could not help but note the irony.
Just a block away, the elephant in the room, Talbot County’s monument and memorial to the Confederacy, casts its long heavy shadow on the Courthouse lawn, perpetuating today in a form of living history, all that Lincoln, Talbot’s Union soldiers, and Douglass fought against. The truth is that the blessed Union won, a Talbot County majority fought for the Union side, and at least 6 African American soldiers are buried a couple of blocks away at Richards Memorial Park off Bay Street.
The significant omission of Union soldiers perpetuates a dishonest version of history that in effect condones all that the Confederate Talbot Boys fought for. Even more alarming, the omission is a continual affront to the dignity of our African American brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, indeed to the integrity of our community. I write to ask our County Council members to put Talbot’s monument to prejudice and propaganda to rest, or at least where it belongs: in a museum.
Kelley Malone
Talbot County
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Willliam Burton says
Removal of the memorial will not change history; our history is indelibly written and memorialized. Do not move the monument; it disgraces the memory of those who fought for what they believed. We honor the fallen soldiers for their ultimate sacrifice, not the cause for what they fought.