The sculpture park provides an uncompromising look at the faces and lives of enslaved Americans

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) – Visitors to the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park wind along a winding path past artwork depicting the lives of enslaved people in America and historical exhibits, including two cabins where enslaved people lived, before reaching the massive monument.

Stretching almost 4 stories up, the National Freedom Monument pays tribute to the thousands and thousands of individuals who experienced the brutality of slavery. The monument includes 122,000 names that formerly enslaved people selected for themselves, as documented in the 1870 census after emancipation at the end of the Civil War.

The sculpture park is the third space created by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, to take an uncompromising look at the nation’s history of slavery, racism and discriminatory policing. The first two sites – the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial to those killed in racially motivated terrorist killings; and Heritage Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration – opened in 2018.

The sculpture park, which opens on March 27, brings together art installations, historical artifacts and personal narratives to explore the history of slavery in America and pay tribute to the thousands and thousands of individuals who experienced its brutality.

After opening the first two sites, Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, said he still had quite a bit of work to do. Most of the plantation’s tourist attractions, he said, focus on the lives of the family that enslaved them. His goal was to create a spot where visitors could “really honestly experience the history of slavery.”

“I see it as a space to tell the truth, a place where we can confront parts of our history and paths that are not usually taught,” he said. But he also believes that ultimately it’s “a place full of hope.”

“If people find a way to create a family and a future despite the horrors of this institution, then we can do something comparable in our time to create a future less burdened by these histories than I think,” Stevenson said.

The 17-acre site is nestled between the winding banks of the muddy waters of the Alabama River and railroad tracks, two transportation mechanisms utilized in the nineteenth century to bring people to the city’s slave markets. Visitors will give you the option to reach by boat, essentially following the same route used to move stolen and trafficked goods.

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The park opens as some politicians, including in the Deep South, attempt to set parameters for a way race and history are taught in classrooms and during staff training sessions. Stevenson argues that such denial has at all times accompanied progress.

“I see this as a form of desperate act to keep up the silence, the established order and the burden of bigotry that we have now handled for therefore long. And I just do not believe it is going to succeed because the truth is powerful,” Stevenson said.

The sculpture park features major works by artists similar to Simone Leigh. Leigh’s Brick House, a 15-foot-tall bronze bust of a black woman, is a robust presence of force at the entrance to the garden.

In Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s work entitled Mama, I Hurt My Hand, a toddler dragging a bag of cotton reaches out to indicate the injured hand to the mother who’s balancing a basket of cotton and a baby strapped to her back. Next to them sits an exhausted, drained man with scarred skin and a broken leg.

Exhibits include two 170-year-old cabins that housed enslaved families on a cotton plantation, a whipping post, chains used to carry human traffickers, and replicas of a transport wagon and slave pen. Interspersed amongst the exhibits are first-person accounts of enslaved and formerly enslaved people about their lives.

Alison Saar, a Los Angeles sculptor, has a chunk in her garden that “relates to runaway slaves and their ability to survive and thrive on their own,” she said.

“I think all of this is incredible and needed more than ever,” Saar said. Visitors to the park will come across sculptures that depict “not only the horrors of being enslaved, but the truly beautiful stories and glory of the people who somehow escaped it and created a life of their own.”

The centerpiece of the park is the National Freedom Monument, whose name comes from the 1870 census by which formerly enslaved people reported their names.

Visitors can walk up, find their family name and touch it, seeing their very own faces reflected in the polished granite – an experience Stevenson himself experienced recently when more names were carved into the stone.

“I came in, saw my name and was surprised by the impact it had on me, even though I had been planning it for two years,” he said.

EJI is a legal organization perhaps best known for its work to free those wrongly sentenced to death – which is the subject of the 2019 film starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, based on Stevenson’s best-selling book “Just Mercy.”

The organization erected the first historic markers in downtown Montgomery years ago to mark slave market and lynching sites throughout the South.

Stevenson said truth and confrontation with history are key to America’s progress, likening it to an alcoholic who must acknowledge the harm he has caused through abuse to be able to move on.

“I feel there’s something higher waiting for us. I feel there’s something that’s more like freedom, equality, justice. But I do not think we will achieve this unless we break down the barriers and burdens that our silence about history has created,” Stevenson said.