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Review & FAQ:
Heyward Shepherd was a free black man, and he was also the first person to be killed in John Brown’s raid during 1859. This monument to him was erected in 1931 with a lot of controversy, by several groups of people who wished to illustrate that not all black people were rebellious or anti-slavery, even though there is no evidence to suggest that Shepherd was ever a slave or even that he opposed John Brown’s abolitionist raid. The United Daughters of the Confederacy presented Shepherd as a “happy slave,” and put up this monument as a direct rebuttal to the shrine-like status of John Brown’s Fort for African Americans. Today, the Heyward Shepherd Monument stands as a testament to the opposing narratives of the Civil War, as told by Southern whites and African Americans respectively.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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