Whipping post removed from outside Sussex County (DE) Courthouse
Source: 6ABC
GEORGETOWN, Delaware (WPVI) -- An eight-foot tall whipping post has been removed from outside the Sussex County Courthouse in Georgetown, Delaware. The Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs (HCA) said the post had been used to bind and whip people for crimes up until 1952, with African Americans being punished disproportionately.
The post was removed Wednesday morning after an hour and a half of excavation.
UPDATE: After an hour and a half of excavation, the whipping post has been removed from the Sussex County Courthouse in Georgetown, Delaware. https://t.co/6DjNMEpcoU pic.twitter.com/Cr5iYJ8Ql9
— Action News on 6abc (@6abc) July 1, 2020
It was being moved to an HCA storage facility. "It is appropriate for an item like this to be preserved in the state's collections, so that future generations may view it and attempt to understand the full context of its historical significance," said HCA Director Tim Slavin. "It's quite another thing to allow a whipping post to remain in place along a busy public street - a cold, deadpan display that does not adequately account for the traumatic legacy it represents, and that still reverberates among communities of color in our state."
The HCA said they will work with historians, educators and leaders of the African American community in Delaware to explore plans for future display of the post in a museum setting, where it can be properly contextualized and interpreted. Delaware was the last state to abolish the whipping post, removing the penalty from state law in 1972.The removal of the last standing whipping post in the nation comes as calls for other statues and monuments being taken down across the country.
Read more: https://6abc.com/society/whipping-post-removed-from-outside-del-courthouse/6288115/
Link to tweet
TEXT
Action News on 6abc
@6abc
·
Jul 1, 2020
An eight-foot tall whipping post will no longer be displayed at the Sussex County Courthouse in Georgetown, Delaware.
Whipping post to be removed from outside Sussex County Courthouse
Officials said the post had been used to bind and whip people for crimes up until 1952, with African Americans being punished disproportionately.
6abc.com
Profile photo, opens profile page on Twitter in a new tab
Action News on 6abc
@6abc
UPDATE: After an hour and a half of excavation, the whipping post has been removed from the Sussex County Courthouse in Georgetown, Delaware. https://6abc.cm/2YQIYdy
0:38
2:52 PM · Jul 1, 2020
There was a Change.org petition to do this as well - https://www.change.org/p/georgetown-mayor-bill-west-demolish-delaware-s-sussex-county-whipping-post
(from 1878)
= new reply since forum marked as read
But for those who were young when it was still in use and witnessed any of the public "floggings", it might, as noted by another poster, cause them and others today, to get memory triggered by that (including having been beaten themselves).
It's a worse offshoot of the "stockade", many of which I expect are still around (e.g., Colonial Williamsburg, VA, which itself is set up as an entire "historic park" with staff who dress in period costumes, where they have a stockade on display but within the "context" of its surroundings) -
If we as a nation complain about "torture" (meted out by our own MIC), then why continue to highlight other means of that completely out of context to the current dysfunctional system of punishment?
it is highlighted within the context of Colonial Williamsburg, where that punishment was during the colonial era.
However with this whipping post, it was still being used during modern times and sits in front of a courthouse without context except for being a reminder of subjugation. The Change.org petition pretty much summarizes the issue -
In 1947, Robert Caldwell, a University of Delaware sociologist, wrote that between 1900 and 1945 a total of 1,604 whippings were administered by law in Delaware. At least 66% of those publicly punished were Black men. Women were also victims of this brutality, and for a period prior to 1889, in addition to men, only Black women were flogged.
There is no doubt that this inhumane punishment was racially charged.
https://www.change.org/p/georgetown-mayor-bill-west-demolish-delaware-s-sussex-county-whipping-post
All it does is remind people of things like this -
or these types of public spectacles -
There are some things that you have to let go until we have healed and then bring them out again in context and in the appropriate venue...
is attempting to compare atrocities committed by humankind against various groups over the millennia. Doing so only causes more pain because it devolves into a "competition". The targeting of Jews around Europe throughout history, the Middle Passage suffered by enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, the wars of aggression to gain territory against Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean and the Americas, the civil and religious wars that resulted in genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing in countries across Africa like Rwanda or Sudan - it should be accepted that inhumanity exists and will continue to exist for all time because other than something like COVID-19 that can take us ALL down, humans have no consistent predators, and tend to "self-thin" populations throughout our existence on earth. 
With the United States being comprised of people from around the world, it becomes very difficult to determine what to teach because nearly all the world's cultures live here and demand learning about what happened to their people in the countries that they came from.
However the history of the United States itself and its own atrocities, needs to be dealt with, and in a way that doesn't continue to cause more pain to those who suffered and continue to suffer as a result of those atrocities.
is that the "facility" itself becomes a "historic museum in situ", with the "context' fairly obvious all around it.
Right here in Philly, the notorious Eastern State Penitentiary still stands and remains for tours and for Halloween events -
And that facility also represented some of the worst types of psychological horror inflicted on inmates in the criminal justice system here.
In contrast, this whipping post is sitting on a public street and serves no purpose other than to reaffirm an archaic practice of the "justice system" that persisted up until the '50s in the state of Delaware, that was inflicted on POC more than any other.
The same argument has been made about the Confederate (battle) flag(s). It's "history" so why "erase it" by removing it/them? 
But now they have to approve a new design and remove the vestiges of the vileness that came in the aftermath of the Confederate loss of the Civil War, but it will take time.
I am just shocked that over a century's worth of divisive stuff has been or is being removed and hope springs eternal that it will one day be replaced with something that truly underscores E Pluribus Unum.
