You may wonder why in the world a whipping post ever existed in a public square in America post-slavery.
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That is the question residents of Georgetown, Delaware must have asked before the protests in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor generated a national and global racial reckoning not seen in decades.
That outrage played a role in the removal of a whipping post that had existed outside Delaware’s Suffolk County courthouse this week but not before its horrific history was revealed.
“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.”
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Delaware did not outlaw the practice of whipping as punishment until 1972, the last state to do so.
