Small and Forgotten
Some National Park System sites are huge (Wrangell-St. Elias in Alaska is over 13 million acres – twice as big as my home state of Massachusetts). Some are tiny, such as the African-American Civil War Memorial, nestled in a small plot at the intersection of Vermont, 10th, & U St. in Washington, D.C. All NPS sites can tell you a lot, however, if you only chose to listen.
I wanted to post an essay about the courage of black soldiers during the Civil War; about their bravery, their sacrifice, and the difficulties they faced. There is so much to tell, so much the average American doesn’t know. But I find myself distracted with more immediate concerns.
In preparation for this post, I wanted to read up on the history of the memorial. So I visited the National Park Service’s site, www.nps.gov. And wouldn’t you know it, they have basically no valuable information about this memorial whatsoever!
This really troubles me. I know the AACWM is not tops on visitors’ “must see” list. There’s no way it can compete with the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, or the Smithsonian. But the role of the National Park Service is not one of tour guide, they are both a protector and a promoter of America’s natural, historical, and cultural treasures. Regardless of how small it is, the AACWM is one of those treasures, a monument to those who risked it all to free their own kinsmen from bondage. Their story is as important as the story of George Mason, whose own little monument has its own page on the NPS site.
The Park Service does a grave injustice by excluding this memorial. One cannot understand America without understanding black America. The history of black America is our history, it’s American history. It’s not just some esoteric subject studied by 15% of the nation. And it really bothers me that the African-American Civil War Memorial gets such short-shrift from the National Park Service.
I urge visitors to Washington to take a half-hour out of their schedule and take the Green Line to U Street. It’s only a block east from there. Take a little more time and visit the nearby museum as well. Yes, it’s not the best area of the city, but that’s part of the American experience, too.
[All photos on this entry are originals by the blog owner.]
Links:
Sadly, there is no link to the National Park Service for this memorial.
African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation and Museum
Agate Fossil Beds itself is nothing special. It’s just a couple of knolls in the prairie. But it does tell a fascinating paleontologic story. See, a couple of million years ago, there was this watering hole. Big herbivores loved this watering hole. Then, one day, it dried up. The herbivores started to starve. Then the predators came and ate them all up, but they too started to starve, for there were no more herbivores. Then the scavengers showed up and ate all the dead predators, but then they, too died, for there was nothing left to scavenge. All of them died in this big heap. A few million years later, paleontologists showed up, and wondered just what the hell happened! Was this some cultic suicide, did these Miocene animals drink some prehistoric Kool-Aid at the bidding of a dinosaur with a bad haircut wearing Ray-Bans? Or was it something more natural? It’s a neat story to those so inclined.
Adams was not only obnoxious and ignored, he was also a rarity: a brilliant ideologue. I’m not overly fond of ideologues. Generally, I find them horribly lacking in any real insight or knowledge, they hide behind their ideology like a shield, avoiding true understanding (because that’s too hard). I prefer pragmatism and practicality. How do we solve problems? That question sparks brilliance, not some high-minded ideal of how the world should work.
As a diplomat, he oversaw the acquisition of Florida (so we’d have a place to dump our elderly), and fabricated the Monroe Doctrine, which drew a line in the sand to European colonization in the Americas. To Adams, this was a moral obligation of the United States. Europe must not further muck around in the affairs of the Americas. He didn’t advocate imperialism of our own, his idea was to allow the Americas to evolve into nations of their own, without outside interference. He was right, absolutely right. To this day, we are still dealing with the problems of long-terminated European colonization in Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. The problems of America are our problems, fomented internally, which is much better than problems foisted upon you by outsiders. Sadly, the Monroe Doctrine would later be used to justify invasions and actions on our own (like the Spanish-American War, a topic for a later time).
After this almost mandatory exchange, I asked the ranger how many people ask her this stupid question every day. “A lot”, she replied. Of course the log cabin at Lincoln’s Birthplace isn’t original. The original one was surely torn down and replaced by the next residents after the Lincolns moved to Indiana (log cabins were not known for their longevity). The ranger did proceed to discuss what was really important: the thoughts and writings of our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln.
We should ask ourselves “why?” Why would a man who presided over the one and only War Between the States (the worst human bloodletting ever witnessed on the North American continent), a man who initiated the first widespread draft in America (leading to riots in New York City and other places), a man who suspended many legal rights (an act used years later as justification for Japanese interment and the Patriot Act), still be so loved by the American people? Not only loved, but perhaps even deified.
But there is another meaning to the word “right”. Lincoln was also the right President at the right time. People tend to forget the mess this country was in before Lincoln. The “slave problem” was a menace, a canker, a tumor on the very heart of America. It ate at the very core of our beloved Constitution. America, a nation supposedly founded on freedom, held hundreds of thousands in thrall, was a nation of hypocrites.
America In Context 