Posted on 02/12/2012 8:36:25 AM PST by Second Amendment First
Nearly 20 years ago, former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder announced that he wanted to create a museum that would tell the story of slavery in the United States. He had the vision, the clout, the charm to make it seem attainable, and he had already made history: the grandson of slaves, he was the nation’s first elected African American governor.
He assembled a high-profile board, hosted splashy galas with entertainer Bill Cosby promising at least $1 million in support, accepted a gift of some 38 acres of prime real estate smack along Interstate 95 in Fredericksburg and showed plans for a $100 million showstopper museum designed by an internationally renowned architect.
And then . . .
“Governor Wilder disappeared,” said Rev. Lawrence Davies, the former longtime mayor of Fredericksburg who was a member of the board. Davies stopped getting notices about board meetings, and when he tried to reach Wilder, he never heard back.
“No one could ever get through to him,’’ Davies said. “We didn’t know what to think.”
It wasn’t just board members and city officials who were left to wonder. There are donors, too, asking what happened.
“I trusted them,” said Therbia Parker Sr., a general contractor from Suffolk, Va., who gave the museum nearly 100 artifacts he had collected over 40 years, including rare and invaluable pieces such as leg shackles, a handwritten bill of sale for slaves, and a collar with a plantation name and slave number on it.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Two words......Escrow Account
The Gov is living on 38 acres of prime real-estate right smack next to I -95 / s
No mule, but an Escalade instead.
Wonder which isand in the Bahamas he’s living on.
You mean a Barbary Pirate Slavery Museum?
All those poor white slaves!!
Somewhere, Max Bialystock is smiling.
Somewhere, Max Bialystock is smiling.
We have one of these in Cincy. Aside from school field trips very few people attend. The taxpayers have been forced to keep the doors open for many years.
What a joke!
Were I to suggest that an accounting should be accomplished, would I be branded a racist?
There are slavery museums all over the southland.
I visited plantations and other southern historical sites in Mississippi and Louisiana in October. All had extensive collections of slave quarters and paraphernalia. Slaves were the central topic of various tours
I am not advocating or excusing slavery. But there has been a deliberate movement to distort history in order to get blacks on the Democrat plantation.
Democrats historical were the party of slavery and Jim Crow, from the beginning until LBJ jumped in and seized his opportunity to grab the black vote.
Republicans fought to free the slaves. The LBJ and the media lied, and pretended it was Republicans who were the racists.
If they want a slavery museum, I hope they get all this straight. And I also hope that, for the most part, their slave ancestors were better off on southern plantations than they were back in Africa, where most of them already were slaves to the Arabs or to tribal kings. And where they were treated a lot worse.
History can be painful.
Can’t have graft AND a museum, so they went with the graft.
Somebody should check eBay for all those priceless artifacts.
Somebody should check eBay for all those priceless artifacts.
Somebody should check eBay for all those priceless artifacts.
Why not it's sharia compliant!
Bump
It sounds like the slave museum folks are proving to be in need of an overseer who can crack the whip and get them working productively. What a bigot am I? The idea just kind of came to me after reading the story. Perhaps we need to outlaw negative thoughts in regard to African Americans, because reading the news lately, this is not the first time I’ve had one.
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