Can anyone tell me why, though we have a national Holocaust Museum (which is, incidentally, a place every American should visit), a museum devoted to slavery does not even exist?

Oh. Wait. I know why:

Deep South slave shrine stirs old hatreds: Plans for a unique museum are placed on hold in the face of death threats from white supremacists, reports David Rennie in Gulfport, Mississippi

... Dr Jones would like to see the museum set up in the South. "That's going to take someone mighty brave, even prepared to cost themselves a political career."

Rip Daniels, a businessman and broadcaster and the Pettys' most prominent black backer, fears the costs for the couple could be still higher. "What Jim has here is heresy," he said. "These objects show that African Americans did not acquiesce, that they did not submit graciously."

Mr Daniels, who owns a local radio station and is one of its presenters, believes that defiant white Southerners are increasingly denying the reality of slavery.

"When you talk to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, they don't talk about actual historical events, they talk of the 'southern gentleman', of how he must have been."

To Mr Daniels, whites have two choices. "They can justify their ancestors, or they can accept that they participated in a horrible episode of American history" he said. "As an African-American, I have to accept that some of my ancestors were in chains."

Rip Daniels has received death threats himself, including a postcard of a lynching, with the message, "You're next".

Pair to give their ?biblical? defense of practice at U of I conference

... "Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity," the booklet reads. "Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world."