Slave auction block removed from Fredericksburg street, headed for museum

As the sun rose, Fredericksburg removed the controversial slave auction block.

Crews went to work earlier to remove the concrete block that has been at the corner of Willaim and Charles streets since 1847. The auction block has been the subject of much debate and controversy over the years with many demanding for its removal from public view.

The removal came as a directive of the Fredericksburg City Council. No advance public notice was given before city crews got to work. A city employee posted a photo to social media of the event.

More recently, the auction block had become a focus of local protesters over the past week, serving as a stop along the procession routes on multiple days of demonstrations. Chants of “Move the block!” joined the chants of those protesting the death of George Floyd in Minnesota, city spokeswoman Sonja Cantu states in an email.

Potomac Local News asked city leaders why the public was not notified of the block’s removal and has received no response. We’ll update this post should we receive one.

The City of #Fxbg has removed the slave auction block on Friday, June 5th. It’s a significant step in living City Council’s directive to relocate the artifact and tell a more complete history of Fredericksburg. Read more: https://t.co/Cm75Vu2QWi pic.twitter.com/qflNSw5h2E

— Fredericksburg, Va (@FxbgGov) June 5, 2020

As the sun rose, Fredericksburg removed the controversial slave auction block.

The removal of the block comes three days after the Appomattox statue in Old Town Alexandria was removed.  Also this week, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam ordered the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond.

The slave auction block was spray-painted with graffiti twice over the course of the days of protest.

The discussion for removal in City Council began at a meeting on August 22, 2017, when City Councillor Charlie Frye brought up in discussion following the “Unite the Right” rally that had recently occurred in Charlottesville. Frye asked for the council to consider removing the block at a meeting that took place the following September.

The council held public forums and an online survey before that meeting which resulted in a 6-1 vote to keep the block in its place. Two aspects of the meeting that would lead to its eventual removal were the addition of historical context to the block itself.

The second was the beginning of a collaboration between the council and the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC) to figure out what the next steps would be.

More meetings, conversations, and reports followed which ultimately resulted in 6-1 vote removal and relocation of the block at a council meeting on June 11, 2019

A plan for relocation had been approved on November 12 which would see the block removed, the sidewalk where it stood repaired, transported, and will eventually be loaned out to the Fredericksburg Area Museum. This was all done under the supervision of the Dovetail Cultural Resource Group, a Fredericksburg based firm that specializes in cultural resource projects.

The approval of this plan did meet opposition and was challenged in court but failed to stop it. Although the ensuing legal obstacles were not completely cleared until April 1, 2020, but were halted by Governor Ralph Northam’s Emergency Declaration due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

The City revised their plans once Phase Two of the Governor’s reopening plan was set to begin which resulted in the removal of the auction block on June 6, 2020.

“As the only minority on the City Council, I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders,” Councilor Frye stated in a press release. “The people of the City never walked away from the table, never stopped talking to each other. This was huge – and it felt great because I came from ancestors who were never heard.”

Fredericksburg Mayor Mary Katherine Greenlaw quoted on this occasion a passage written by James Baldwin in an August 1965 essay for Ebony Magazine called “The White Man’s Guilt”:

“History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, we are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do,” Greenlaw states in a city press release.

The slave auction block is set to be displayed in the Fredericksburg Area Museum, no date has been set for that exchange.