(This letter was sent to the Oak Bluffs Board of Selectmen)

The Board of Trustees of the African American Heritage Trail of Martha’s Vineyard have asked me to write this letter in support of the request by the Martha’s Vineyard chapter of the NAACP to remove two plaques from the statue of a Union soldier in Oak Bluffs. We support their proposal to remove those plaques, and place them in the Vineyard Museum as interesting and historic artifacts. Those two plaques which honor the Confederacy were in fact added to the statue in 1925 and were not part of the original monument.

The basis of cultural competency and good neighborliness is to understand that perspectives differ widely depending on an individual or a group’s experience. The Southern Poverty Law Center has extensively researched the whole phenomena of Confederate Memorials and it is a fact that most of them were built in times of great racial conflict. The majority of them were erected during the late 19th century and the early part of the 20th century when the Jim Crow Laws were being enacted following the demise of Reconstruction. Given that information, it seems clear that the addition of the two plaques honoring the Confederacy for its rebellion against the Union in defense of slavery placed on the monument in 1925 reflect that sad era in our history.

Enslavement and all its horrors was a real part of the experience of people of African ancestry in this country for almost 400 years, and the Jim Crow years of segregation and the brutal response to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s reinforced that historic trauma. Two plaques that honor people who fought to preserve that injustice and cruelty belong in a museum, and not in front of Oak Bluffs harbor where it sends a chilling message to all who visit.

The signs that were used all over the country to enforce segregation have been placed in museums or destroyed. They do not remain in place to demonstrate how “it used to be.” The same rationale applies here. We stand with the NAACP on this issue. Oak Bluffs does not need to display those plaques honoring the Confederacy. We as a community are better than that.

Elaine Cawley Weintraub, Ed.D (cofounder/director, African American Heritage Trail of Martha’s Vineyard)

West Tisbury