Memorial Honoring Black Patriots Stalls

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The New York Sun

Most accounts of the Revolutionary War give the impression that America’s independence from Britain was won by brave white men. Maurice Barboza wants to tell the rest of the story.

He’s trying to revive an effort to build the first monument on the National Mall honoring black Colonial soldiers — perhaps the most forgotten heroes from the nation’s birth.

The project would recognize such people as Crispus Attucks, the first patriot killed in the Boston Massacre, and James Lafayette, a Virginia slave who risked his life to spy on the British and was granted freedom in return.

“They were Americans, and they should be honored,” Mr. Barboza said. “They were founders of the country.”

Congress first approved the idea for a memorial honoring enslaved and free black Revolutionary War soldiers and a prominent site for the project more than 20 years ago. But after years of planning, the idea languished due to fund-raising and management problems.

Now it’s stuck in Washington’s bureaucratic maze. The National Park Service wants to enforce a moratorium on any new monuments and museums on the Mall that Congress established in 2003 to prevent overcrowding. The park service also notes that the original National Mall site for the memorial expired in 2005 with Congress’s last authorization of the project.

“The clock ran out,” the assistant secretary of the Interior who oversees the park service, Lyle Laverty, said. “It’s up to the Congress to reauthorize” that site.

Mr. Barboza, a former lobbyist, says the Mall site hasn’t been taken by any other project and should still be available because only the memorial’s sponsor has changed — not the history.


The New York Sun

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