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< Return to Events and Press Releases Letter to Oversight Committee6/5/05 TO: The Oversight Committee and The Six Semi-Finalists RE: "Substantial, Significant, and Prominent" Role of Blacks DT: 6/5/05 From at least 1619 through 1865, Africans and African descendants were legally enslaved in America. This enslavement constituted not only the total loss of liberty but also the total loss of culture, family, language, land, religion, human status, and name, as well as, for many, the loss of sanity, limb, and even life. Although this horrific loss can never be regained, it can and must be addressed by word and by deed. The word must be a verbal and official acknowledgement by America of its more than 246 year crime against humanity. And the deed must be a physical manifestation of that word. For example, George Washington enslaved more than 300 Black men, Black women, and Black children at his Mount Vernon, Virginia plantation. And he forced several of them to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when he was housed in the city at America's first "White House," which was located at the current site the new Liberty Bell Center. Independence National Historical Park and the National Park Service have finally relented by agreeing- after decades of denial and years of public protests- to commemorate those Black men, Black women, and Black children enslaved by Washington in Philadelphia. The issue now is who will be selected for the commemoration project. Equity, equal opportunity, justice, and fairness require that today's free Black sons and daughters of yesterday's enslaved Black fathers and mothers be selected to play a key role in the commemoration project. In fact, Philadelphia City Council in 2002 adopted resolution 020521 "calling upon the National Park Service (and Independence National Historical Park) to ensure equitable economic participation in opportunities arising from the... project and the appropriate memorializing of the... human beings of African descent held in bondage at that site." Accordingly, Avenging The Ancestors Coalition (ATAC) and others demand- in the interest of equity, equal opportunity, justice, and fairness- that Black architects, Black designers, Black construction firms, Black historians, and other Black workers be selected to play a "substantial, significant, and prominent" role in the slavery commemoration project. UNPAID BLACK LABOR IN THE PAST- |