Preserving American History
With all this talk about taking down memorials that celebrated Confederate generals, it is a good time to highlight historical sites and memorials that do need to be preserved. May is National Preservation Month, and now more than ever it is important to preserve our history because FACTS still matter in the country, regardless of what the Trump regime thinks.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently released its annual list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places to “spotlight important examples of the nation’s architectural and cultural heritage that were at risk of destruction or irreparable damage. Of the sites that appeared on the list since 1988, fewer than five percent have been lost.”
This list includes historical sites that tell America’s story. Here are some of them:
- Penn School (South Carolina): the first school in the South designed to educate formerly enslaved Black students, now part of the Reconstruction Era National Monument.
- Little Rock Central High School (Arkansas): where nine Black students known as the “Little Rock Nine” challenged angry White mobs in 1957 to desegregate the school per the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
- Angel Island Immigration Station (California): the San Francisco Bay site where hundreds of thousands of Asian immigrants first entered the country between 1910 and 1940.
- Nine Mile Canyon (Utah): home to stone artwork and other relics of the Ute people, once threatened by chemical damage from nearby traffic.
Read the full listing of all 11 sites here: