Walking along the idyllic brick sidewalks of downtown Fredericksburg, Virginia, locals and tourists who pass the Olde Towne Butcher on the corner of William St and Charles St might notice a grayish-brown stone protruding from the sidewalk that is about the size and shape of an overturned bucket. A bronze marker at its base reveals that this stone was formerly used to auction off slaves.

Locals and city officials refer to it colloquially as “the slave block” or “the auction block”. Most peoples’ reaction upon learning of the block’s past is horror. Now, especially in the wake of the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, the community is trying to decide what to do with it.

A common reaction is to throw this rock in the same mental heap of memorials and flags that honor the Confederate south and many are rushing to have it removed. Last week, an online petition was created to demand its removal. The petition currently has more than 2,500 signatures from across the country.

But for now, the block is not budging. Is Fredericksburg a town full of insensitive racists? Not quite. There are many deeply concerned residents in the town who feel that the slave block is categorically different from the monuments and statues that depict Confederate generals as heroes.

“In this discussion, we are talking about what is the history,” explains the Fredericksburg mayor, Mary Katherine Greenlaw. “We are not talking about a memorial or something that is after the fact or a glorification. This is the history. That is the spot. This is the significant distinction.”

The slave block in Fredericksburg: ‘We are talking about what is the history,’ says the mayor. Photograph: David Caprara

The slave block is not a manmade creation to honor history; it is history. There is no question over the interpretation of the block – it is a living symbol of hate, oppression, and the agony of black families that were physically, mentally, and spiritually brutalized by their white hypocrite oppressors for generations. The question is what to do with all of this.

Those who maintain that the block should stay where it is assert that rather than serving as a blow to racists, removing the block will give them the privilege of forgetting history – a privilege that they do not deserve.

“The point that a lot of people make when they look at [the block] is that it makes them feel uncomfortable – frankly, that is not necessarily a bad thing,” says the city councilman and civil war re-enactor Matt Kelly.

“We feel uncomfortable because it represents something that we never want to see again. Hopefully it reinforces in us the sense that we all have a role in making sure that it never happens again.”

And this is not the first time the block was proposed for removal because it made people feel uncomfortable.

In 1924, the local Daily Star reported that the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce came before the Fredericksburg city council to petition for the block’s removal, claiming that the block had never been used to auction slaves and that it made the town look bad.



“The communication states that the rock was not a slave block,” the Daily Star wrote, “but was used years ago as a base for ladies to mount horses, and by its display to tourists as a place of selling slaves, it may serve somewhat to keep alive the sectional feeling which has long since disappeared.”

Several days after the article and the petition to city council, the Confederate veteran John Tackett Goolrick weighed in with his support. In an article in the Daily Star titled The So-Called Slave Block, he asserted that the notion that the block was once used to sell slaves was “flagrantly false”.

“For many reasons,” he wrote, “It should be broken up and carried away.”

An advertisement for slaves in the Daily Star newspaper. Photograph: cliping

It may be true that the initial purpose of the block was for mounting horses –the building that the stone sits in front of used to be a hotel. Soon after Goolrick’s article, however, the local auctioneer NB Kinsey brought in an old newspaper advertisement to the Daily Star offices that clearly advertised the street corner of the auction block as the location for the sale of seven slaves. From there, the discussion went silent.

Today, it is known that at least 12 slaves were sold from this location.

The year 1924 was not a time of racial tolerance in the American south. It was the year Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, a flagrantly racist piece of legislation that set in place the “one drop rule”, which established that if individuals had “one drop” of black blood, they would be treated as black and legally subject to segregation.

Legislation such as this and the models for segregation in the south were seen as models for the Third Reich’s own forms of white supremacy in Nazi Germany. It is not unreasonable to think that willful ignorance was at play when the Chamber of Commerce and Goolrick denied the block’s full history and petitioned for the its removal.

Despite the differences between the petitions of 1924 and today, the fact is both groups want it removed for the same reason: they don’t want to be reminded of it any more.

“Both extremes would love for this whole discussion to go away,” says Kelly.

“The hardcore southerners don’t want to be reminded of slavery, and they will tell you to your face nine times out of 10 that slavery was not the cause of the [civil] war and that it was economics. You needed the slaves to make your economy work. And then the other side says: we want to obliterate anything remembering or acknowledging that slavery every happened. If we take the slave block out, both extremes win.”

An illustration of the slave block, 1920s. Photograph: Albert Crutchfield

Indeed, we do not preserve the Auschwitz concentration camp and maintain the Holocaust Memorial museum as places for white supremacists to venerate their atrocities, but rather so that the perpetrators of these atrocities and their descendants can feel the pain of the agony that they inflicted upon others, so that we can remember those who suffered, and so that the rest of society can safeguard itself from following in the footsteps of extremists.

Many who are most affected by the history of the block, however, are simply tired of looking at it. Earlier this month, more than 150 people gathered for a prayer vigil around the block, many of whom feel that the pain it causes to African Americans is egregious. The former Fredericksburg city council member the Rev Hashmel Turner is one of them.

“I personally don’t need something like that to remind me of what my ancestors had endured,” says Turner.

“If you want healing, why would you continue to leave obstacles in place that remind you of the suffering?” he asks. “You can’t heal if you always have the reminder. “

Opinions about the block are not clearly divided along racial lines, however. There are white people and black people on either side.

“I don’t come down on one particular side because I see both sides,” says Jervis Hairston, who leads walking tours of African American history through downtown Fredericksburg.

“When I see tears of anguish and weeping at that corner by that stone, I don’t know for certain all the time that the person who is experiencing those feelings is of the opinion that [the block] shouldn’t be there,” Hairston says. “I actually sometimes think that they appreciate the fact that it is there so that they can perhaps better understand what may have happened to their grandparents or great grandparents.”

Although there is a tendency for outsiders to weigh in, Fredericksburg residents and city officials on both sides are firm in their position that this is a local issue.

“As a representative of the City of Fredericksburg, I will not allow outsiders to come in to dictate how we handle business,” says the city councilman Chuck Frye Jr, who reopened the discussion in city council for the block’s removal. “I’m not going to have people come in and make a mockery of my city.”

Nobody wants to see another Charlottesville, where extremists who have no connection with the local area are helicoptered in from all over the country to attack and disrespect the local community.

In the end, a middle ground – either putting the block in a museum, or increasing the signage around the block to provide more context – might prove to be the most favorable option.

One thing is clear, however: quickly nuking all traces of controversial history without engaging in community dialogue and considering the consequences is a path of passion rather than logic and can often yield results opposite to those originally intended.

David Caprara is a Fredericksburg native and graduate of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He now lives and writes from New York. Follow him on Twitter at @Caprarad