The “Blank Slate: Hope for a New America” monument is so well-traveled, it remains perched on a flat-bed truck that’s hauled it to a dozen of cities across the country this summer.
The latest unveiling was at the King Center in Atlanta last Friday, in honor of the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington D.C. and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
The monument is a towering statue featuring four African-Americans. After a purple cloth was removed from the statue, the sculptor, 38-year-old Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, described his creation from the bottom up, starting with a slave, kneeling on the ground: “there we see him, bonded, chained, he probably didn’t even know English,” Akoto-Bamfo said.
Standing on the slave’s back, is a Civil War soldier, a Black man dressed in the uniform of the north, “he fought for what he believed in,” Akoto-Bamfo continued. “He fought for freedom that he never saw.”
And at the very top of the statue, stands a Black mother with a child on her back, holding a lantern in one hand and a blank slate in the other. That’s what makes this statue interactive: the slate is electronic and can display messages written by visitors.
