ATLANTA – In the midst of a new push to eliminate Confederate monuments after the death of George Floyd, a rural Georgia, the city faces the fate of a rare 18th-century pavilion where slaves were once sold.
Market House, or Slave Market, in Louisville is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been a cultural site through county officials. The open-air, viewpoint-like structure dates back to the 1790s and is one of the few such buildings still in state in the United States, according to ancient documents filed with the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Critics say it’s a constant reminder of a painful component of the country’s history and that it will have to be removed from downtown Louisville, a city of about 2500 people about 80 miles southwest of Augusta, where most citizens are black. .
The city council is expected to make a resolution on the long term of the layout at its assembly on Tuesday.
“When I go through this, I see women with their children being set apart and sold to other white men as their property,” said James Ivery, a former Louisville resident who is pushing for the design to be removed. “I see that other black people in this country do not represent more than three-fifths of a human being. This tells me I’m less than a dog, a cow or a sold horse.”
Like some conflicting parties over the removal of Confederate monuments, citizens who wish to stay in the Market House where it is lately cite its old price and say it can be used to teach visitors the horrors of slavery.
Yonchak said that members of an old local society hoped to teach others better about the structure, but opposed its elimination. Yonchak component of a committee to advise city officials on what to do with it.
“For us, all we see, all we can find is history,” he said at a committee meeting in July, according to the Augusta Chronicle. “Everything we left here today is history. Our fear is that through the dismantling, transfer of the Market House, we will lose this story.
The committee voted to remove him from the city center. The city council is expected to resume that council on Tuesday and make a final decision.
“We’re not looking to destroy it,” Cynthia Wells, another committee member told WJBF-TV, “We just need him out of the center. This will be a domain where everyone feels comfortable.”
Some committee members said he will move to a community-built museum.
At least 77 Confederate statues, monuments or markers have been removed from public lands nationwide since Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minnesota on May 25, making 2020 one of the busiest years to date for moves, according to an Associated Pressure Tally. Most were abducted through government officials, the protesters overthrew some of them.
But the markers that many racists have not dropped so temporarily in rural areas of the country.
The Market House, built between 1795 and 1798, served as a shopping center in Louisville when, in short, it was the capital of the state of Georgia, according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of the Interior. In 1977, it was included in the National Register of History Places.
Slaves were sold there from the beginning. He also used to sell land and family property, according to the nomination.
In 1977, much of the wood used in its structure was reinforced with iron.
The nomination called it “one of the few existing structures of its kind and its goal in the United States,” bringing out its age and state of conservation, among other factors.
But for Ivery, 68, he’s only been a symbol of hate since his grandmother told him, when he was little, how he used to use it. He asked if he could play there while they were buying groceries downtown one day.