Sculpture Park in Alabama’s Capital to Reconcile Past African American Experiences

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Sculpture Park, Alabama- A Step in the Right Direction


Opening on the first week of April in Montgomery, Alabama will be a new Sculpture Park commemorating the past experiences of enslaved African Americans in the United States of America’s history and containing several different forms of physical artwork modeling the worst aspect of our country’s history.


The park contains 17 acres of statues along the Alabama River, a key source of transportation for the African American slave trade itself centuries ago. With over 15 million African American men, women, and children perishing over the course of the 400 years in American history during the slave trade, such monuments are cardinal to preserving the history of the abominations that transpired. They simultaneously work to touch the hearts of citizens and those abroad to empathize with victims and never repeat such a travesty again.


Logistically, the project, created by social justice activist and director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) Bryan Stevenson, is placed in a strategic location close to another significant area of cultural history; a Memorial to Peace Justice open-air region with 800 suspended columns honoring lynchings (public execution without punishment) and the delayed justice of African Americans. The latter portion is in honor of William E. Gladstone, who claimed that justice delayed is justice denied, with efforts to revert the once true dismal message of that quote present throughout the project.


The Sculpture Park is also located near the Legacy Museum in Alabama, which features a plenitude of gruesome images depicting incarceration and trafficking. It is linked very closely to Stevenson’s ultimatum with all of this…


But what is that ultimatum? Well, according to Stevenson himself in an interview, “we see this as a place to have a deep, immersive engagement with the legacy of slavery, and primarily the lives of enslaved people, so we can have a deeper understanding of that. ... It’s about humanizing it.”


Overall, it isn’t enough just to be told that something was bad. People need to see it, and they need to see exactly how it was like in the place where it was happening the most. Thus, we encourage all of you readers at home- if you ever get the opportunity to swing by Alabama, we highly encourage you all regardless of race to visit this park filled with nearly 50 awe-inspiring statues from world-famous artists and pay respect to the “10 million people who were enslaved in this country”.

From a 43 foot tall monument to 122,000 surnames imprinted to a 170-year-old plantation dwellings and whipping post, there is so much to learn from sites like these, and at the end of the day, there is so much to experience about something so tragic and so meaningful to so many. You won’t be disappointed.


Sources:


Whitaker, Mark. “An Alabama Sculpture Park Evokes the Painful History of Slavery - CBS News.” Www.cbsnews.com, 18 Mar. 2024, www.cbsnews.com/news/freedom-monument-sculpture-park-montgomery-alabama-evokes-history-of-slavery/.

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Sheets, Hilarie M. “Alabama Sculpture Park Aims to Look at Slavery without Flinching.” The New York Times, 11 Oct. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/10/11/arts/design/freedom-monument-sculpture-park-alabama.html.

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“Freedom Monument Sculpture Park Honors Lives of Enslaved People (Part 1).” NBC News, www.nbcnews.com/video/freedom-monument-sculpture-park-honors-lives-of-enslaved-people-part-1-207430725736. Accessed 30 Mar. 2024.

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“The Legacy Museum.” Legacy Sites, legacysites.eji.org/about/museum/.

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States, United. “Remarks at a UN General Assembly Commemorative Meeting for the Intl Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and Transatlantic Slave Trade.” United States Mission to the United Nations, 25 Mar. 2021, usun.usmission.gov/remarks-at-a-un-general-assembly-commemorative-meeting-for-the-intl-day-of-remembrance-of-the-victims-of-slavery-and-transatlantic-slave-trade/.


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