I join the thousands of Talbot County citizens imploring you to remove the Confederate statue from the public land of the County Courthouse without delay.
Let us remember what has happened on this public site, which is supposedly dedicated to adjudicating justice but in reality reflects “an unbroken tradition of white racial ownership of critical public spaces”:*
Human beings were bought and sold to the highest bidder at auction here;
*Frederick Douglass was jailed for a week and daily taunted by white slave traders here with the prospect of being sold to Georgia or Florida – simply for the crime of attempting to escape slavery;
*“The largest incident of mob violence in Talbot County history took place here – the narrowly averted near lynching of Isaiah Fountain on Easter Monday 1919, six years after the erection of the Confederate statue.
On that evening, nearly 2,000 whites assembled outside the courthouse on the first day of his trial with ropes and knives intent on his lynching. Eventually Mr. Fountain was wrongfully convicted and hung on a gallows in the Talbot County jail on July 23, 1920.*
This is the history that must be acknowledged and remembered. This is the history of racial violence and trauma and fear that still reverberates in the generations of African Americans in Talbot County.
I ask each of the Talbot County Council members: Why not remove the Confederate statue to a location on private property? Because the Talbot Boys are veterans? They certainly weren’t fighting for freedom but for denying it to enslaved African Americans. Councilmembers, whose feelings do you hesitate to hurt? Whose political support do you fear losing?
Do you want to be remembered for being the County Council that demonstrates it is anti-racist by its actions? Or would you rather be remembered as the County Council that maintains the racist status quo and is one of the last hold-outs in the United States to remove its monument to the Confederacy?
Grow a spine, do the right thing, lead the way and remove the Confederate statue from the Courthouse lawn.
*from Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century: On the Courthouse Lawn, by Sherrilyn A. Ifill.
Denice Lombard
Tilghman Island
Mary Margaret Revell Goodwin says
The Talbot Historical Society has a photo of the slave market at the County Court House. This action was so famous at the Talbot Court House that the photograph was published in London. The Spy or the Star Democrat should publish it in relation to this call to take away the Talbot Boys monument. Going off to fight for the Confederacy was going off to fight against the same government that Eastern Shore men fought both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 for. I am left to wonder if the remaining descendants of the Talbot Boys really want this memory continually thrust in the view of those of our citizens who are working towards a more perfect union. Yes, we made mistakes in the past, and they are massively regrettable, but it is not a reason to continue in that same vein.
S. says
Thank you for the poignant examples of historical events, including footnotes of attribution to S. Ifill.
And, I agree.
Hugh Panero says
What an excellent letter and history lesson. Half measures are not enough and as Ms Lombard says to the Councilmember, “grow a spine. Do the right thing”.
Vickie Wilson says
Thanks for sharing some of the historical facts that occurred on the courthouse lawn. Move the statue.
Alan Boisvert says
Thank you Denice Lombard for your excellent letter. What happened at our courthouse sickens me. The Talbot county council shouldn’t need to grow a spine to do the right thing.
The right thing should be easy to do, even by a spineless worm. Just DO it.