Faneuil Hall and the Moral Fogginess of Mayor Martin J. Walsh

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh has refused city hearings that could change the name of Faneuil Hall in Boston, a city-owned building connected to supremacy and slavery. (Photo Credit: The Boston Globe)

All across the nation, communities are debating the relevance of statutes that speak invariably to our history. Americans are questioning the presence of Confederate cenotaphs that glorify men who fought to subjugate other humans. They are assiduously interrogating symbols on flags and the names of public schools and commercial districts in order to evaluate their civic purposefulness. They are surveilling what constitutes art in the public square and seeking to better contextualize the meaning of democracy in relation to our story — which is our history — even when it is a story only half told.

Such discussions have been roiling for nearly three years in Boston. While advocates have been engaging locally elected officials on changing the name of Faneuil Hall — an iconic downtown tourist relic associated with a slave trader who bequeathed the building to the city in the 1750s — the issue has morphed into larger, existential questions, namely: How do we understand the complexity of our collective histories, while at the same time respecting the heritage as well as specific matters of trauma experienced by others? And to what extent, 401 years after slavery was introduced into our nation, do we appreciate the desired goal of achieving a multi-racial democracy?