Post Zimmerman, A California Reader Notes Some "Fine Print" At The Jefferson Memorial
07/17/2013
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From: An Anonymous Jeffersonian [Email him]

I was recently in the DC area on business, and decided to visit the monuments. Inside of the Jefferson Memorial I was reading the engravings when I noticed one of them didn't sound quite right.
When I got back home (Southern California) I looked up the real quote.  I have added the "fine print" to the picture I took of the engraving. This goes to show very literally that a lie about race is now engraved into the very temples of our nation.
A Reader Adds Some Fine Print To The Inscriptions On The Jefferson Memorial
James Fulford writes: The Jefferson Memorial was erected in 1943, under the New Deal. If it had been built in 1912 or 1850 it would have different inscriptions. Today it might be impossible to build it at all. Our reader is not the first to notice this cut, but it's suggestive that he looked at what liberal Garry Wills called a "misleadingly truncated" quotation and thought it sounded wrong.
For the record, courtesy of the Monticello Foundation's web page, the whole quotation from Jefferson is

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them." - Jefferson's Autobiography
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