Editor’s note: The following letter was sent to the Georgetown mayor and members of Town Council.
The Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice requests that you deny the Georgetown Recreation, Education and Arts Trust Fund request from the Georgetown Historical Society (June 23, 2022), which is on your July 25, 2022, agenda.
The alliance is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to the elimination of racism and its corrosive consequences in all its forms and manifestations.
The historical society must not receive any public funds if it continues to glorify the enslavement of human beings by, among other things, hosting a memorial to the un-Americans who fought for the Confederacy and flying the Confederate battle flag on its grounds. Make no mistake, the alliance wants and encourages remembering the history of enslavement and the Civil War, properly curated to demonstrate and convey its evil and the un-American, unconstitutional conduct of many.
Pre-Civil War, Delaware was a state that allowed enslavement, as was Maryland. Delaware and Maryland did not join the Confederacy and attempt to leave the United States. Many Delawareans joined in the United States’ efforts to defeat the traitors and reunite the Union. Those Delawareans deserve a memorial.
The few Delawareans who turned on their country do not. Nor should the flag of the insurrectionists be glorified. Their history and unpatriotic conduct should be contained and properly curated in museums and history books that accurately depict their treachery and efforts to maintain enslavement.
But it was about “states’ rights” or “heritage,” some lamely claim. It was not. The denunciation of the United States was all about the perpetuation of slavery. That is amply demonstrated in history and conclusively proven by enactment of the three Civil Rights amendments to the United States Constitution in the 1860s — the 13th, no enslavement; the 14th, due process and equal protection; and the 15th, the right to vote — which made clear that enslavement was illegal and justice was to be for all, an aspirational goal we still work to attain.
Simply put, the “states’ rights” or “heritage” sayings are merely a longing for the era before the Civil War, the abolishment of enslavement and the goal of justice for all. Those sayings were used to develop and perpetuate the era of Jim Crow’s rampant discrimination, finally ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Delaware’s own Republican U.S. Sen. John J. Williams, for whom Route 24 is named, cast the deciding vote to end the filibuster and allow passage of that historic act.
The town must join the state in denying funding to a museum that glorifies unconstitutional acts and the traitors who fought for the perpetuation of enslavement. Learn more about the group’s loss of state funding due to the flat here.
Again, we support the historical society telling the story and history of Delawareans who supported the enemy of the United States with properly curated, museum-quality efforts. If the historical society glorifies actions supporting enslavement and traitors who fought to maintain it, it must not receive public funding and does not qualify to be involved in celebrations of democracy, such as Return Day.
Tom Irvine
History Committee chair
Southern Delaware Alliance for Racial Justice
