Inside Adams Coliseum, in an alcove on a south wall, there is a display of 57 bricks collected by a Vincennes Sun or Vincennes Commercial sportswriter (it's not clear for which newspaper he practiced his craft, but since both those papers are now us, we can call him one of ours) from historical sites both near and far (one's from Grouseland just a few blocks away), when the gymnasium was being built in 1925-26.
Each brick has a brass plate indicating from whence it came.
One of the bricks came from Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home up on his little mountaintop near Charlottesville, Virginia.
Most certainly that brick was made by slave hands, as, quite possibly, was the brick from Grouseland.
Their existence had been long forgotten, their discovery only coming when the gymnasium was being looked over for renovation in early 2010, so to say that the bricks have played a significant part in the community's history would be overstatement.
Monuments that go unnoticed have no hold over our collective memory, no demand on us.
No one that we know of has ever considered taking hammer and chisel to the wall to remove the Monticello brick due to its near-certain relation to slavery; removing that brick would only leave a hole in the wall, it wouldn't result in Jefferson changing his mind about race.
The same could be said about Grouseland, which was almost certainly built in part by slaves, just as slaves would later on be servants to the Harrison family after construction was complete. No one we know of has proposed taking a wrecking ball to the mansion in an effort to erase its connection to slavery.
That William Henry Harrison believed in the virtues of slavery is a fact, that he sought to expand slavery into the Indiana Territory despite the prohibitions set out in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 is true, that he and his followers came up with the ruse of indentured servitude to establish de facto slavery is, unfortunately, a sorrowful chapter of our history.
In the end, Harrison and his followers stubborn support of slavery would cost Vincennes the chance of becoming the first state capital.
We don't talk much (if at all) about the connection we have with slavery, perhaps because of our demographics, perhaps because of our geography, perhaps because of our very human reluctance to discuss uncomfortable subjects.
Yet we do have a past when it comes to race, and we shouldn't try to whitewash that history just to make us feel better about it today.
Because our history won't go away. Remnants of it pop up from time to time, still pointing out that, locally, race divided us, such as evidence of the “colored only” section of balcony seats at the Pantheon Theatre.
We know those who argue that no one alive today has any direct responsibility for slavery, that no white American should feel any remorse for whatever role their ancestors may have played in attempting to perpetuate the “peculiar institution” or segregation of public facilities.
But history has baked our cake, and if we aren't willing to acknowledge the past then it will continue to live on into the present — and we all have a responsibility for the present.
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. William Henry Harrison owned slaves. Black couples had to sit upstairs at the Pantheon, attend separate schools, even register with local authorities or be forced to leave the state.
It's all part of our story. We shouldn't shy away from telling that story, the good or the bad.