The University Of Virginia Should Build a Large Memorial to the African Slaves Who Helped Build the Rotunda and Other Structures on the UVA Campus

BLACK BUZZ NEWS SERVICE
Charlottesville, Virginia
July 27, 2010
(BBNS)

The University of Virginia's founder, Thomas Jefferson was also a owner of African slaves. It would be fitting, appropriate and continuing the process of reconciliation for one of the premier universities in the United States of America to erect a significantly large statue of one of the slaves or group of slaves as a tribute to the African labor, perseverance, intelligence and ingenuity in building the magnificent structures that represent the horrible antebellum institution of slavery. It would be fitting and appropriate to erect a significantly large statue depicting the building of the Rotunda or of any other buildings that slave labor helped to build on the UVA grounds.
All known names of the slaves and their families who helped to build any part of the academic village should be engraved on the statue.
The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade along with slavery in North America, the Caribbean and South America was the largest institution of forced human bondage in the annals of history. Many Americans still suffer the psychological and social scars from that nefarious institution of slavery.
The ever present persistent systemic as well as individual racism in the USA is one of the antecedents of that dreaded Euro-American chattel system of slavery.
The University of Virginia made the right choice in erecting a memorial cemetery for the UVA grads who died in the Civil War, and it would be appropriate to erect a very large statue of the slaves who built many of the buildings on the UVA campus. Those slaves' lives are as equally as important as the UVA grads who died for the Confederate States of America.
Jewish Americans rightfully never want us to forget the brutality of the European holocaust. African Americans also never want the American public or world community to have amnesia when it comes to remembering the most cruel devastating institution of human suffering--- being the wholesale rape and subsequent enslavement of Africans from the East and West coasts of Africa beginning in the first century A.D. There is no other human suffering that favorably compares with what Blacks in the Americas experienced as a result of those two institutions being the Trans Indian East Coast Slave Trade and the Trans Atlantic West Coast Slave Trade coupled with slavery. It has to be understood by all Americans that freedom in America was built upon the enslavement of others.
A large slave memorial statue on the campus of one of the founding fathers of the Republic who was a slave owner, could be a good learning tool for research scholars, teachers, students, parents and the community as we move forward in the 21st. Century. Thus UVA would be a shining example to the nation in showing that it has comes to grips with slavery in its DNA and the part that Africans slaves played in building the famous University of Virginia.
The African slaves who helped to build UVA and a significant part of the entire USA should not be relegated to a position of a few obscure bricks and markers which people walk over on a daily basis without knowing the benefit or the historical importance of the people who played a part in constructing this world class university.
I highly recommend that a renowned African American sculptor be given the opportunity to erect the memorial for the slaves who helped to build the significant structures on the pristine campus of the University of Virginia.


Ronald B. Saunders is a member of the University of Virginia Alumni Association.