Pete Lesher recently proposed removing the Confederate Talbot Boys statue from the Talbot County Courthouse. It is clear from the many letters to the editor, that public opinion supports this proposal.
In 2015, I was frustrated when council members refused to honor the NAACP’s request to remove it.
But I understand why.
I learned this lesson at the workplace. In many meetings, I would propose a solution, only to be ignored, until the end of the meeting, when someone (usually a man) would make the same proposal and the group would applaud him for his solution. I would return from these meetings, steaming, until a team member explained that I wasn’t being ignored, it was just that people needed to go through their process before they were ready to hear the solution.
Floyd’s murder and the “Black Lives Matter” protests have awakened a sleeping majority. I think that most Americans have “gone through their process” and now see the injustice that this statue represents. While it doesn’t fix our problems, its absence will be a powerful symbol of our willingness to address racism.
Some who wish to keep this statue argue that we need to respect history. Yes, these soldiers died for a lost cause, but so did our Vietnam soldiers. What makes this lost cause more special? In fact, it is more unsavory.
The history of the Eastern Shore is a shameful history of slavery. Our soil contains the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved people. The battles to free them did not happen on our soil. But individual bravery to right this wrong did.
Our history boasts of heroes who fought this injustice. Slaves used our rivers and marshland in a desperate and deadly escape to freedom. There were also the Quakers of Third Haven and Freemen and Freewomen at “The Hill” who risked everything to assist them. The risks were significant. Freemen and women who were caught would be enslaved and transported to their deaths in the deep south. Quakers would lose their farms, their freedom and their lives. There is more history, carefully chronicled by our historians. These redemptive stories help to cleanse our soil of the remnants of our dark past.
For those who are pragmatic, it also is an opportunity to increase tourism. Many people are interested in the stories of slaves who escaped, Frederick Douglass and others who sacrificed to end injustice.
Slavery was a deeply troubling institution. Let’s memorialize those risked their lives to end it, rather than those who died trying to preserve it.
Angela Rieck, a Caroline County native, received her PhD in Mathematical Psychology from the University of Maryland and worked as a scientist at Bell Labs, and other high-tech companies in New Jersey before retiring as a corporate executive. Angela and her dogs divide their time between St Michaels and Key West Florida. Her daughter lives and works in New York City.
Al DiCenso says
I am in favor of its complete removal, but to be preserved in a more suitable location, if that’s practical. I’m not a Maryland native, although have lived here for 33 years. My native home is Williamsport PA, which happened to be an important “station” on the Underground Railroad, so I’m very familiar with that portion of Civil War history. At some point I would like to sit down with a historian of that period and discuss some little known facts about the fascinating connection between Williamsport and the Chesapeake Bay.
Jane Murphy says
I wholeheartedly agree with the author of this well reasoned post.
Philip Russell says
Tired of reading about this. Just move it. There are more important things to discuss.
Alan Boisvert says
Big Amen to that Philip 👍
Keith A Watts, Esq. says
I agree with Dr. Rieck. Time for “The Talbot Boys” — base and all — to go.
If you have not seen it, there is a photograph of The Talbot Slave Market that is so shocking, shameful and sad, that tears will well up in the eyes of any man or woman who has empathy and compassion for others. If you have not seen it in The Spy’s interview with Bishop Joel Marcus Johnson, take a look for yourself.
https://youtu.be/fWqRO_0jyGQ
In another life, another time, those “slaves” could be me. Or you.
The County Courthouse’s stark silhouette looms over that Slave Market, like a black storm cloud gathering over hundreds of human beings bartered, bought and sold on its doorstep. In a perverse twist of fate, our Talbot “Center of Justice” stands there mute, darkly silent, casting an ominous shadow over lives that would never know a cherished, fundamental right. The right that very Courthouse was erected to house, protect, defend — and guarantee to all — “Justice.”
Day after day. Year after year. Century after century they were kidnapped, bought and sold in our public square. Kidnapped. Bought. Sold. And died.
What do you suppose was important to them? Freedom.
What do you suppose they wanted to “discuss?” Freedom.
Think they were ever “tired?” Tired of being denied freedom? Tired of never having a clean drink of water in a lifetime? Tired of never having a home. Tired of never feeling safe? Tired of never having justice? Tired of never feeling Like. They. Matter?
Most — if not all — of the people in that photograph were torn from their families. Never more would they see the ones they loved. Never more would they laugh with them. Never more would they hug them, kiss them, know the warmth of their touch or the sweet, simple joy of being together.
With each other. Like the families they were. Like our own families.
Ever.
The last remaining symbol of inhuman servitude in the State of Maryland, the last remaining symbol of shame, the last remaining symbol of century upon century of oppression still stands in our public square. On hallowed ground.
Let it now travel a different road. Relocate “The Talbot Boys” with whatever respect due to the Talbot Historical Society.
I have hope that each of you — and all of you together — and all of us — will join together in a common moment of grace, humility and determination. And hope. To do the right thing when the Council votes in July.
Together.
Not just because I’m asking. Not just because Dr. Angela Rieck is asking. Not just because history is asking. Do it because every single enslaved human being — who over 400 years was born, lived and died in Talbot County — is asking.
Who suffered in chains is asking. Who suffered in bondage is asking. Who suffered never losing hope that one day — one day — they would be free — is asking.
Set them free. Relocate “The Talbot Boys” and its base. Set us all free — and make our world — and Talbot County, a better place.
Council Person Divilio’s “Unity Monument” gives homage to both sides and the terrible cost of freedom. Our freedom. The one we so often take for granted. His proposal gives us hope.
It is a symbol of coming together. A symbol of respect — to all and for al — after a bitter, divisive conflict. A conflict that only began to end at Appomattox . . . .
Let there be no more division. Let there be only humility, empathy and compassion moving forward.
Let there be hope.
Amen to that . . . .
RC Shafer says
The popular, historic presumption that the Civil War was waged over the issue of abolishing slavery — was not the history I was taught as a student in my native Vermont. Our school board curriculum took the point of view that the War Between The States was a war of secession. Civil wars, by definition, refer to military uprisings seeking to conquer and occupy the territory of the defeated. The South had no desire or ambition to occupy the North — only to seceed from the Union and therefore preserve itself as an independent sovereign agricultural nation and way of life. True, the agricultural business model of the South relied heavily upon plantation slavery — without doubt a primal motivator for Abolitionists in the North who viewed slavery as morally diabolical. The point can easily be made, then, that the South was morally bankrupt in basing its economic survival and prosperity on human bondage and therefore needed to be taken to task and taught a lesson. ….. . all of which misses my point entirely. In the exact same spirit with which American Revolutionaries sought to “seceed” from the British monarchy, Confederate “revolutionaries” aspired to throw off their Constitutional alliance with the dominating Industrial North in order that they might establish their own soveriegn “self.” Americans with a burning need to define the War Between the States strictly in their own self interests — would understand this monumental conflict with deper clarity — if they would open their minds to the fact that truth is more often than not plural rather than singular. For many serious students of history, the issue of slavery was subordinate to the ideal of secession. Often celebrated as The Free State during Civil War times, Marylanders should endeavor to live up to that reputation by acknowledging the fact not every man who took up arms against his fellow countrymen was single-minded in purpose.