Bryan Stevenson’s monuments to the Black American story

It’s been nearly seven years since the proposed removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia that culminated in a weekend of lethal white-supremacist rioting and terrorism. It was around that time that many people worldwide learned, seemingly for the first time, that the statue itself was terrorism.

It was part of a long legacy of Jim Crow pushback against the reality that Black Americans are owed civil and human rights. It’s also meant to erase and reconfigure history. Naming schools and buildings after someone is meant to honor them, which is why the push to remove the names of everyone from Confederate generals to racist Presidents from buildings is still underway. Placing giant monuments to enslavers and traitors in our public spaces was, and still is, meant to make us feel small. At least some of us.

Inside the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, established a year after the Charlottesville attack, you’ll see a map detailing not just where these racist artworks were built well after the Civil War ended — but the rapid pace with which they were erected. Last week on Juneteenth, the Equal Justice Initiative and its founder, civil-rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, formally added another Legacy Site in Montgomery, Alabama, debuting a powerful response to the dehumanizing nature of Confederate memorials: The National Monument to Freedom.

Whereas Jim Crow statues make Black folks feel shut out of the American story, the Monument and its sculpture park invite us back in. As The New Yorker’s Doreen St. Felix described it, the central piece of art “is a giant book, standing forty-three feet high and a hundred and fifty feet wide. The book is propped wide open, and engraved on its surface are the names of more than a hundred and twenty thousand Black people, documented in the 1870 census, who were emancipated after the Civil War.” The accompanying sculpture garden features works by modern giants such as Kehinde Wiley, Theaster Gates, and Simone Leigh.

Visiting these Sites is a necessity for every American. I’ve already been dumbstruck as I visited the other two: the aforementioned museum, expanded in 2021; and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial to the lynched that overlooks downtown Montgomery — the former “cradle of the Confederacy” and once a hub of the slave trade.

In advance of the Monument’s formal introduction last week, I sat down and spoke with Stevenson about the new park and the motivation behind building it.

Jamil Smith: I am very sorry that I cannot be there on the 19th to see the debut of the National Monument to Freedom — but tell us a little bit about what’s the driving force behind this new Legacy Sites?

Bryan Stevenson: During the pandemic, I took time to go to some of these plantations that exist in the United States, just to get a more accurate understanding. I’ve always been very skeptical and very critical, but I wanted to see for myself. And my takeaway was that they marginalize the lives of enslaved people, so that even when people tried to elevate the history of enslaved people in these spaces, the architecture and landscaping are organized around the lives of enslavers. And I just think that’s left a real absence in the American landscape of a place you can go, that focuses on the lives of enslaved people and tells a more honest story about the legacy of slavery.

So that was the thinking behind creating Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. We acquired 17 acres of land on the banks of the Alabama River, which was a main [slavery] trafficking portal in this country. Thousands were brought to the Deep South by steamboat on that river. The site is also locked in by rail lines built by enslaved people. And of course, the trains were the other primary method by which people were trafficked. For that 40-year time period, thousands of people were being brought to this area.

What we wanted to do was talk about the history of slavery, beginning with the history of indigenous peoples — because obviously, there were people on these lands for centuries, before Europeans arrived, and that story hasn’t been told well. Then, we wanted to talk about Africa before Europeans, because this myth has emerged that somehow slavery was the best thing that could have happened to Black people because life was so bad in Africa, when in fact, Africa was leading the world in a lot of are, such as metallurgy, astronomy and medicine. Then, we wanted to take a deep dive into the history of slavery in the United States.

I know that talking about this history is hard, because it’s such a brutal, violent, painful history — so we wanted to balance that with art. The visual record of slavery in the United States has really been corrupted by these benign depictions that a handful of people made. So we looked to artists to help us tell a more honest story. We’ve been really fortunate to commission pieces from some of the greatest artists and sculptors in the world, to acquire some pieces to also receive pieces. Our park uses art and sculpture along with narrative to tell the whole history of slavery in the United States, as a journey you can walk through.

Something that’s really important to me is to not just talk about the degradation, the abuse, the violence, the assaults, the sexual violence, the humiliation, all that we feel like we have to detail in order for people to appreciate the harm and the evil of slavery. But we also want to talk about the courage, the resilience, the resistance, the perseverance and the faith of enslaved people who brilliantly found a way to love in the midst of all of this suffering and sorrow. That story about enslaved people is a story we really want to lift up, and we do that at the end of the experience with this National Monument to Freedom with a 43 foot tall structure that’s 155 feet long. [To create it] we took the 1870 census, which was the first time that 4 million newly emancipated Black people had an opportunity to claim a surname that the government recognized. In earlier censuses, the enslaved people were given numbers, or maybe a first name, but never the dignity of a surname. So the 1870 census is a really important document in the history of Black people in this country who are descendants of enslaved folks. And we got all 122,000 of those names, and we put them on the monument.

And now when people come to the park, if you’re the descendent of enslaved people in this country, you can find your family name on the monument. And I just think, for all of us who carry these names, and carry this history and carry this legacy, there ought to be a place where we can come to acknowledge our ancestors, honor our foreparents, and feel the power and the love that allowed them to endure as we move forward.

As we got closer [to Juneteenth] we started putting names up, I was over there every day, till one day I left and came back the next day, and they put in the panel that had my family name. And even though I’ve been thinking about this and working on this for months, it still blew me away, to see “Stevenson” on the monument.  To see “Baylor,” my mother’s name. So I think it’s a really great opportunity for people in this country who have long been marginalized in these history spaces, who have been made invisible, to finally have the opportunity to be seen. And to have a place you can actually touch something that represents your history.

I’m the son of an anthropologist who attempted to do her best to trace our family history. I’ve always had this feeling of displacement. In a way, since we don’t have burial grounds, this can serve for some people not just as a site of celebration and learning, but also mourning and remembrance. 

I’m curious to know what you feel about, like how people have come to other legacy sites, what kind of spirit do they bring with them? I mean, I imagine it’s different for a lot of different folks, especially for people who are African American.

I so appreciate what you’re saying, because you’re right. Mourning is also important. Mourning and grieving allows us to appreciate struggle and harm and difficulty. What we’ve also done with these names is to identify every county and every state where the name was recorded. So “Smith” is a very common name and “Johnson” is also very common, but you can actually advance genealogical work and research because if you say, “I know my people were in Virginia,” we’ll be able to tell you the counties where the “Smiths” were recognized and sometimes you’ll see first names that align to grandparents or great grandparents and we’ve already seen a lot of people do some important work to advance their their genealogical pursuits, which is something really exciting even for me.

At all of our sites, I think there is that moment of personal reckoning. So at the National Memorial, we identify all of the counties in America where Black people were the victims of racial terror lynchings. If you’re from a county in Virginia or a county in Pennsylvania or a county in Ohio, and you see your county there, but also the names of people who were — it becomes really personal for you, because that’s your community. Obviously, for those of us who are the descendants of these communities directly impacted to see the spaces where our people came from…coming to the legacy sites is like a pilgrimage. It’s like a journey. This is a narrative experience. This is not, you know, a kind of an attraction.

What I’m excited about is, this is not education that most of us have been taught. Unfortunately, curriculum around history in the United States has been very resistant to talking honestly about the history of slavery, the plight of indigenous peoples, what happened after Reconstruction, Jim Crow and segregation. And I think a lot of people learn a tremendous amount after spending a few hours at these sites, and it changes the way they think about so many other issues.

And that’s really our goal. It’s really truth telling. I really believe we need an era of truth and justice, truth and restoration, truth and reconciliation, truth and repair, truth and redemption. When we embrace that, then we get to do some great things. A lot of times people come to our sites and they think, “Oh, you’re talking about slavery, and lynching and segregation, because you want to punish America.” And I always say, “Look, I have no interest in punishment. That is not my thing. My whole life has been about getting past punishment, my interest is liberation.” I genuinely believe that for all Americans, that there is something better waiting for us.

I think there’s something that feels more like freedom, more like equality, more like justice, more like liberty than we have yet to experience. But we can’t get there if we’re unwilling to unburden ourselves from this history that weighs on us that we have too often stayed silent about, and these sites are really about ending the silence and opening a door that allows us to get to someplace better.

The last time we had this kind of lengthy conversation, we discussed America’s penchant for memorializing and why we must memorialize deliberately. I’m curious: were there any other thoughts about how to do this project, how to accomplish the goals that you set out, and then you said, “Wait a minute, no, this is actually the way to go”? I’m curious to know how that decision process went.

It was kind of a big bet to use sculpture and art as a primary component of this place. Most of the sculpture gardens in the world are not narrative spaces. They’re not organized around a particular history. They tend to be more abstract; that’s what contemporary art has kind of moved into. We were trying to do something very different, and I was worried that that might be kind of misinterpreted — but I’m really pleased with the way things have come together.

I’m really grateful to these prolific artists for embracing this kind of project. You know, to say, “I want my piece to be contextual.” So the first piece you see is Simone Leigh’s “Brick House,” an extraordinary, beautiful Black woman, [which] won at the Biennale and in 2022, all of the awards. She’s a renowned artist, but to have that sculpture surrounded by a story about the history of Black women in this country.

We’ve got sculptors from indigenous artists like Rose B. Simpson, her sentinels, these gardens, these tall, extraordinary figures looking over the river, to be able to contextualize the history of indigenous peoples with that art.

We’ve got pieces from Theaster Gates and Rashid Johnson, all of these great artists. So that was not something that I was sure we could make work, but I’m really pleased by how that has been integrated into the space. And then just the authenticity of place, people keep saying, “Why don’t you put these things in Washington? Why don’t you put these things in New York? It would be easier for people to see.” There’s no question, we’d have ten times the visitors.

But, I think there’s something important about the authenticity of space. And if it’s going to be a pilgrimage, then you may have to leave Manhattan, you may have to leave DC, you may have to come into the region of the country where this history was so resonant. This was the heart. This was one of the most active slave-trading spaces in America, between 1848 and the Civil War. When Reconstruction collapsed this was the area where terror violence was so pervasive in the Black Belt of this country. Desegregation and civil rights [movements], it started here. It was the Monroe County bus boycott where courageous people stood up when they were told to sit down, and spoke when they were told to be quiet. The South is where [the rate of] mass incarceration is the highest in the world.

So I actually think there’s something important about coming into this space, and experiencing this history in the very place where this history was so profoundly shaped.

Editorial Note: This article first appeared on The Emancipator and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.