Opinion: William & Mary should celebrate the leaders of its ascendancy

The proposed “Memorial to African Americans Enslaved by William and Mary,” 10 years in the making, may yet be subsumed — contextualized, you might say — by a larger, more immediate national phenomenon.

Fair or unfair, it could end up taking its place alongside the removal of statues, the purging of once lauded personalities (include Alexander Graham Bell, Francis Scott Key and Benjamin Franklin among the latest) and the attempted rewriting of American history.

But, for the moment, about the proposed memorial, a few observations and a suggestion for another memorial.

It’s a box and a big one. A “hearth,” so claimed, to be six feet wide, 45 feet long and 20 feet high. It will constitute the first new construction on the original campus since the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg in the 1920s, when the Wren Building was rebuilt for the umpteenth time.