Look Out Below!

Tourists have always seemed to like the Washington Monument. What did they know?

My nephew, smart and passionate in these matters, informed me just last night that 750 statues all around America that have ties to the Confederacy must come down, stating, "Taking them down is all about the present and the future. It's about the message given to black children today and every day they remain." So in light of the following information on Wikipedia, it looks like the Washington Monument will have to go, and possibly Washington's Mount Vernon Estate, a popular tourist attraction, slave quarters and all:

"When George Washington was eleven years old, he inherited ten slaves; by the time of his death, 317 slaves lived at Mount Vernon, including 123 owned by Washington, 40 leased from a neighbor, and an additional 153 "dower" slaves." While these dower slaves were designated for Martha's use during her lifetime, they were part of the estate of her first husband and the Washingtons could not sell them. As on other plantations during that era, Washington's slaves worked from dawn until dusk unless injured or ill; they could be whipped for running away or for other infractions.
 
Visitors recorded varying impressions of slave life at Mount Vernon: one visitor in 1798 wrote that Washington treated his slaves "with more severity" than his neighbors, while another around the same time stated that "Washington treated his slaves far more humanely than did his fellow citizens of Virginia."

Nobody seemed upset (by the Monument) when Martin Luther King Jr. spoke there.