For nearly 100 years, rode high over the city of Charlottesville. Now, it's been melted into bronze slabs and another memorial in town has risen to national prominence. It's on the UVA campus, titled the .
It stands as the antithesis to the Confederacy, honoring the slaves forced to work at the university in the 1800s as carpenters, blacksmiths, roofers, stone carvers and other back-breaking trades. "All these men, women, and children lived with dignity, resisted oppression, and aspired for freedom. For more than four decades, the entire University was a site of enslavement," according to the UVA President's Commission on Slavery.
"Now, we’re confronting our past, uncovering new knowledge, and using that knowledge to teach, heal, and shape the future." That same in the USA, as communities from Alabama to Alaska rethink who the true heroes were from their pasts. The result is memorials and renaming of historic places that pay homage to honorees who, not so long ago, would have been seen by some community leaders as too obscure or too underprivileged to merit such recognition.
"It is exciting to see local visionaries are being celebrated for the role that they have supported in their local community," said Brent Leggs, executive director of the , after seeing in Akron, Ohio. Truth, born into slavery, and activist for African-American civil rights in the 1800s. Along with the memorial in Akron, she is also the first African American woman to have a statue in the U.
S. Capitol b.