City of Fredericksburg ready to put U.S. National Slave Museum land on auction block

While capitalism has, at least in part, afforded many within the West an unprecedented standard of living, capitalism also shakes the present from its roots with the past if and when that past stands in the way of profits.


The city of Fredericksburg is going ahead with plans to sell the U.S. National Slavery Museum’s land due to the museum’s delinquency in paying its city property taxes. The U.S. National Slavery Museum owes over $320,000 on their tax bill to the city of Fredericksburg.

After the museum filed for bankruptcy in 2011, museum officials promised that an anonymous donor would foot the city’s tax bill. That promise has not however been fulfilled.

Although the city is in the right for going ahead with its efforts to sell the museum’s land, the situation offers a vivid and dismaying look at how precarious many of our country’s historical landmarks, sites, and buildings are to the tough and tumble world of capitalism.

Capitalism doesn’t know or care about the past or the lessons that stem from that past. In a capitalist system of economics, profit is the name of the game, not allowing unprofitable museums to remain in place.

So if the museum’s land is sold, an important part of Virginia’s history will be sold along with it. It’s difficult to explain to future generations that this location was once a Mecca to the slave trade in the American states when a housing development is built over it.

But more particularly, this situation could also be a real indication that this part of Virginia’s, and America’s, past is no longer a piece that many Virginians want to remember. It was so long ago, after all, why does it still matter?

Without going into a book-length answer, suffice it to say that the lessons of slavery in the America’s still has great importance for us as a nation.

Among other lessons, slavery should remind us as Americans that we are not perfect and that we never have been. All too often in school, our kids learn a distorted and rose-colored history of the “United States.” What is sometimes left out, and oftentimes just glazed over, are the serious struggles in our country’s history.

We should always remember, at the very least, that our democratic republic was not always so democratic and that we, as a nation, have made serious mistakes before.

Humility will be all the more important as America continues to grow culturally, economically, and perhaps politically. Humility is one lesson that can unmistakably be learned from our country’s past with slavery.

1) http://www.nbc12.com/story/20285983/va-city-plans-to-sell-us-slavery-museum-land

2) http://www.nbc12.com/story/20285983/va-city-plans-to-sell-us-slavery-museum-land

3) http://www.history.com/photos/slavery-slave-trade/photo9