Interactive civil rights monument makes stop at King Center
The ‘Blank Slate’ monument includes a screen that displays messages from visitors who come to see it. It’s at the King Center through Sept. 4.
Emil Moffatt/WABE News
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.
“So that we may see the words of everybody else who has something to say,” Akoto-Bamfo said. “And everybody else who wants to share their thoughts, their dreams, their frustrations on racial injustice in America.”
Akoto-Bamfo says he created the statue as a response to the hundreds of Confederate monuments still standing in the U.S.
The daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Bernice King, says works like these, along with the performing arts can often help society transcend evil and inequality.
“No matter what expression, art has a way of reaching our sensibilities and awakening our humanity,” she said.
The Blank Slate monument is on display, outdoors at the King Center from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., through Saturday, Sept. 4.
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