with that auction block right there on the corner? it was, like, an embarrassment. i don t need to see that block to know what the past was. it made me mad because my great grandma, great grandpa, you bring them in on a boat. then you sell them. how do you try to memorialize something like that? it is totally unfair and unreal that people can sit there and say that, oh, we re just saving history. no, what you re doing is spitting in our faces. that s what you re doing. just across the river from downtown is the chatham plantation, where hundreds of slaves toiled for nearly a century. can you imagine the conversation that happened here, the idea that fear of separating from family, torture. but the flip side is the fear you could be sold at that auction block. can you imagine from out there seeing this nice big, brick house. you re not thinking, oh, i want to go that s a house of horrors. that s like a haunted house.