“I first visited Charleston 50 years ago, as South Carolina celebrated the 300th anniversary of its birth in 1670. As a Harvard graduate student studying early American history, I hoped to write a dissertation on the beginnings of African enslavement in the colony, although my Ivy League mentors wondered if sufficient sources existed. While turning my research into a book, I fell in love with Charleston, except for one huge and forbidding public monument. More than a century after black emancipation, a monstrous statue of John C. Calhoun still hovered over the old port city. Even after the Freedom Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, a leading mastermind of white supremacy retained a central place of honor, high above Marion Square. As I came to understand how deeply his defense of racial oligarchy was still rooted in the soil of the Lowcountry, I wondered if he would remain there forever. ...”
John C. Calhoun statue taken down from its perch above Charleston’s Marion Square (June 2020) (Video)
amazon: The 1619 Project Chapter 7 - Politics: Jamelle Bouie
