Day 196…
In the dead center of downtown Fayetteville, North Carolina there is a traffic circle. Inside that traffic circle is a very interesting looking building.
The ground floor is a rectangle with 5 arched opening on each of its long sides and 3 arched openings on each of its shorter ones. There are no windows or doors over these openings, instead they are open and lead inside to a more or less open area. The only things that break up the interior space are some support walls and columns that hold up the second story.
The second story is a square that sits directly atop the central three openings. There are three smaller arched windows on each side of it, each with proper glazed windows.
Above that is a clock tower in two sections. The lower contains the clock and is square. The section on the top of that is a cylinder with narrow vertical louvered openings. Sitting atop the whole thing is a golden weathervane in the shape of a shooting star.
The building is somewhat unique in that its design owes more to old English market building architecture than it does to the styles that developed here in the United States. It was built in 1832 on the site of the old State House which had burned down the year before in what the town calls the Great Fire of 1831.
Fayetteville is where a resolution called The Liberty Point Resolves was signed about a year before the Declaration of Independence was published in Philadelphia. While not a call for independence per say, fifty residents of Cumberland County resolved their hope that Great Britain and the colonies be reconciled. Should that not happen, the Cumberland Association vowed, they would "go forth and be ready to sacrifice our lives and fortunes to secure her freedom and safety"
The meeting took place in Lewis Barge’s tavern, which stood within a block or two of the current location of the traffic circle in downtown Fayetteville.
The Old State House was where the delegates from North Carolina had gathered to sign the United States Constitution.
The Market House, as the odd-looking building in the circle is called, has long been the symbol of the town. It is part of the official seal of the town. It has, historically also been on all sorts of other official documents.
There is currently a petition that was begun in June that has been signed by over 115,000 people. That represents slightly more than half of the town’s population.
They want to tear the Market House building down.
Why? The Market House in Fayetteville, North Carolina, is a place where slaves were once bought and sold.
The petition reads in part: "The reason we are making this petition is for peace and unity within the city. This has been brought up in City Hall meetings many times over the years and ignored. We have peacefully protested against the building being there. It is very disrespectful and fuels hatred for African Americans by people who still believe in the values of slavery and racism. There have even been many attempts to burn this building down and it gets rebuilt every time. People are risking their lives to get rid of a building that causes hate, racism, and is a symbol of injustice."
There are those who deny that the Market was ever used for the sale of slaves. They are proud of the building and want it to remain. They consider it the focal point of the town.
In 1934, during a surprise stopover in Fayetteville, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt got out of her train to stretch her legs and expressed her desire to see the “slave market”. The Fayetteville Observer representative who had been enlisted to be her guide quickly assured her that the story was all a fraud. No slaves had ever been sold there. He must have been convincing because she got back on the train without ever visiting it.
In 1948, a petition circulated to move the building from its position to somewhere else because it was hindering the flow of traffic. A prominent local who was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy said if that happened, she would go downtown and, “sit on top of it with a machine gun.”
In 1970 while the Civil Rights movement was still in full force, local officials made a concerted effort to get the words, ‘slave market’ off of some state maps. They were afraid that the city would become a target for protesters.
In 1979, the Fayetteville City School Board voted to take the image off of their high school diplomas because of complaints from black residents.
In 1988, perhaps hoping to put the matter of whether or not slaves had been sold there to rest, a Duke University professor studied the building’s history from 1790 through 1865. He found that, indeed, about every two months, there were auctions of people that took place at the Market House. Many ended up on the block because of estate foreclosures.
Here are some advertisements that the professor found in the Fayetteville Observer’s own files:
- From 1839, “family of Negroes, consisting of a Woman and Five Children.”
- From 1846, “a Negro woman and child, belonging to the Estate of John McArn, dec’d.”
- From the same edition in 1846, “Ten Likely Negroes, consisting of men, women, boys and girls,” to be sold for cash under a Deed of Trust sale at the Market House
- From 1851, “Sale of Negroes,” at the Town Hall, “Ben about 27 years, Tena about 13 and Harriet about 60.” Also, that year, “a man by the name of Bill, well known as a boat hand, belonging to the above estate.”
- From 1863, an “Administration Sale” at the Market House to include land and “the following negroes; viz: Jim, aged about 20 years, Nancy, aged 17, and child about 18 months old. Terms at sale.”
According to the last census, Fayetteville is fairly evenly divided along racial lines. White people account for about 45% of the population and black people about 43%.
When I drove into Fayetteville, (and yes, it was to see the Slave Market) I found the building surrounded by black fencing. Painted on the asphalt on the traffic circle itself following the line of the fencing, were the words ‘Black Lives Do Matter - End Racism Now’ in giant yellow letters.
During the riots following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Market House had been set on fire.
The presence of this building is causing pain. Its history is a constant reminder to the people who live there of an unimaginably horrific past. It is located in the DIRECT CENTER of the town.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be Jewish and live in a town that had a Nazi crematorium in its center? To have that crematorium on the seal of your town. On your children’s High School diplomas? To have holiday decorations placed on it every year?
I will never advocate for the destruction of something like the Market House. Erasing it is just as bad as glorifying it.
Instead of razing the building, however, move it. Put it somewhere where it is not the focal point of the town where it can be used to teach people about their past.
People who want to keep the building try to say that it is where the Liberty Point Resolves took place. It wasn’t built yet and it isn’t even on the site where that happened.
They say it is where the delegates ratified the Constitution. It wasn’t built yet.
To protect it, a representative from the town’s paper LIED about it to Eleanor Roosevelt.
If your only defense of it is to lie about the reasons to keep it, something needs to give.
Take it out of the active life of the town and turn it into a teaching tool. Clearly the lesson still needs to be taught.
Think about this sale advertisement from 1859 for a minute, “a valuable woman and three children, to close a deed of trust.”
What is the likelihood that that woman was sold together with her children? That sale is probably the last time that any of those people saw each other. Picture that woman, probably in shackles, watching as her children, also in shackles, were sold and torn away from her. Picture what it would feel like, if you were descended from that woman, to drive past that building every day.
That is what this whole discussion about Civil War monuments is about. It’s not about honoring the Confederate Generals or the southern fighting men. It is about the unimaginable pain and anguish that was visited upon the men and woman who were bought and sold as property for much of our nation’s early history that these people were fighting to preserve.
After picking up a meal, I left Fayetteville and continued on to Charleston where I spent the night.
Charleston has long been high on my bucket list. It didn’t disappoint. Its architecture is very much of the past with many of its gorgeous old buildings still standing and well-taken care of. I was able to walk around, both during the evening I got there as well as the following morning.
Much of it is very beautiful, indeed, but I couldn’t help but be constantly reminded that it is a city built on slavery.
Slaves were bought and sold outside the historic Exchange and Provost Building. Between 1783 and 1808 about 100,000 enslaved people from all across Western Africa were funneled through Charleston who were then auctioned off to the highest bidder and dispersed throughout the colonies.
There is a building called The Old Slave Mart down a side street that is the remaining one, of once many such buildings, that were built to hold similar sales of living human beings. That building is set up as a museum to teach people about the horrors of the practice. It was closed on Sunday morning while I was there, so I guess I am going to have to go back someday to see it.
A few days ago, at the National Archives, our President announced at the White House Conference on American History, that he is going to create a commission that will promote what he calls “Patriotic Education.” He said that there will be a grant established to be used to formulate a “pro-American curriculum.”
He railed against what he called the “web of lies” being taught in our country’s classrooms.
"Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse, the truest sense. For many years now, the radicals have mistaken Americans' silence for weakness. They're wrong. There is no more powerful force than a parent's love for their children. And patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country."
The 1619 project is a Pulitzer Prize-winning project developed by the New York Times Magazine which tries to reframe how we view our history by showing the consequences of slavery and putting African American leaders into their rightful positions in our national narrative.
"Critical race theory, the 1619 Project, and the crusade against American history is toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country." So ranted the President of the United States this past Thursday in the very building that holds the original copy of the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution.
Sometimes it feels like we don’t need to fear a dystopian future because it is already upon us.
If we can open our eyes to the truth of our history and take in what others around us are experiencing, we have a chance to move forward, together. Hiding from those truths or worse, knowingly lying about them, keeps those wounds open and raw in perpetuity.
Slavery is a disease that isn’t easy to cure. The overt symptoms might disappear, but the underlying after-effects linger on. They linger on and get passed down to the victims’ children and their children and on and on uninterrupted. The disease travels both through the slavers’ lines as well as those of the enslaved, but we’re all infected on some level. It can stay hidden and undetected but continue to guide our actions without us even realizing it.
For heaven’s sake, we have to all vote.
We need to open our eyes, open our hearts and then we need to all vote.
We don’t need to all keep carrying this disease with us.
Let’s finally try to cure it.
....I am absolutely incredulous having read your post...it began “ dead center “of this town.... people being sold... I think some people still are being.
Yes, we must vote
today I choose not to be bought or sold by lies
and be freed by the truth
however
harrowing it is
❤️