We need the National Park Service to Tell St. Augustine's History

The two columns below are a good example of real history and the Pollyanna syndrome,in which second-raters try to sugar-coat history.

There were slaves bought and sold in the Slave Market in St. Augustine -- the same place to which our City wants to limit visual artists, under pain of being jail.

The history of the Slave Market is not well told here. The history of African-Americans, Native Americans, Minorcans, Gays and other discriminatee groups is also not well told here. There is an ethnocentric tint to "official history" hereabouts.

That is only one of the many reasons why we need the National Park Service to tell the story of St. Augustine's history as part of a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Parkway.

David Nolan explains (below) the specific facts that establish beyond a reasonable doubt that slaves were sold in the Slave Market.

Former City Attorney GEOFFREY DOBSON emotes (below that) about how there's no evidence of slaves being sold. DOBSON uses logical fallacies, including appeals to authority (two respected historians, no less). DOBSON does not look at the evidence that David Nolan examines. In short, DOBSON's column was a case of wishful thinking and public relations "spin," masquerading as "history."

Ralph Waldo Emerson personally observed a slave auction in the Plaza de la Constitucion in 1826, a fact known to DOBSON, who cited it in an affidavit used by the City in the artists' First Amendment case. Why would DOBSON suppose no slaves were sold in the Slave Market, without performing research? [Answer: DOBSON's lazy, as his non-research did at the Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission of St. Johns County, which bought a $1.8 million luxury Bell Jet Long Ranger helicopter on the bias it was "sole source," when it was not "sole source." (AMCD got a full refund of the deposit thanks to good work by Commissioners Jeanne Moeller, John Sundemen, et al. and by AMCD counsel Doug Wyckoff).]

We have slave graves in St. Augustine cemeteries, We have an 11,000 year history of human habitations here. Our all-white City Hall history establishment is not doing a good job of telling our history -- we need a national civil rights museum here, just as there is in Memphis, showing future generations the struggles here that led to enactment of the 1964 Civil RIghts Act.

We need a National Historical Park, Seashoer and Scenic Coastal Parkway here, to tell the true history of our area, for as Dr. Michael Gannon of UF has said, the worst thing we could do for our 450th and 500th anniversaries (of St. Augustine and Spanish Florida) would be to tell anything less than the unvarnished truth.

How about a National Park Service visitor center behind the Sebastian Winery, where the Sebastian Inland Harbor will never be -- a place where tourists could see shrimp boats and view 11,000 years of history, with plenty of room to park, connecting with light rail trolleys to show off this beautiful town, our seashore and our forests?

What do you recckon?