[ad_1]
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — In 2018, Georgia-based artist Jerome Meadows was selected for a challenging project: a public artwork commemorating Black lynching victims for permanent display in a bustling section of the mostly white Southern city of Chattanooga. a dark history of racial violence.
The monument, which will open this weekend, especially honors Ed Johnson, A black man hanged from the city’s Walnut Street Bridge by a lynch mob in 1906.
Johnson was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for raping a white woman. After the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a stay of execution, a crowd entered Johnson’s cell and hanged him from a nearby bridge.
Johnson’s murder led to the first and only criminal case in Supreme Court history. The court found six white men guilty of contempt of court, including Hamilton County Sheriff Joseph F. Shipp. Johnson’s name Cleared by Hamilton County court In 2000, nearly a century after his death.
Meadows’ work features a bronze statue of Johnson standing with lawyers Noah Parden and Styles Hutchins, Black men who risked their livelihoods to appeal his conviction. Johnson appears to be on the move, walking away from the crime scene. A noose stretches under their feet. Along a slope descending into the Tennessee River, Meadows sculpted silhouettes of figures representing other Black men lynched in Hamilton County. Commissioned by a Tennessee organization called The Ed Johnson Project, the work was completed in collaboration with the Knoxville-based landscape architecture firm. Ross/Fowler. (South Carolina-based artists Jan Chenoweth and Roger Halligan also contributed to the design of the project.)
Efforts to secure approval and public funding for the monument after the Ed Johnson Project, which was established in 2016, met with some resistance from residents and community leaders who initially felt it was unnecessary to showcase the city’s shameful past in such an important location. Hamilton County Commissioners ultimately voted to spend $100,000 on the project. the city of Chattanooga and scores of private donors also contributed to the financing.
At the end of the 20th century, memories of atrocities had faded, especially among white Chattanoogans. The bridge was renovated as a pedestrian walkway in 1993 and is today considered a gem of the thriving city, a popular place for marriage proposals and family photos.
The Ed Johnson Memorial, just meters away from the lynching, aims to bring history to light.
A New York City-born artist who has worked in his Savannah, Ga. studio since 1997, Meadows attended the Rhode Island School of Design and holds an MFA from the University of Maryland. With landscape architect Roberta Woodburn, he also designed the African Burying Ground Memorial Park in Portsmouth, NH. He recently spoke about his new work in Chattanooga and the challenges he faced to complete it.
How do you expect people to react to this monument?
From the beginning there were some people who did not think that this monument should be created. They didn’t think it had to be created in that place, because that walking bridge is that positive experience. Why would you want to create something that speaks to such a bleak event? But then I heard that there are indeed members of the African-American community who question whether this should happen. Why do we want to revisit these things? Maybe because I’m from New York, I was ready to backfire. But that never happened. We need to announce to the whole city that this is a believed, positive thing and that it will be adopted by the city.
As an artist who has designed other works for public spaces around the country, can you tell me what makes a monument worthy of public art?
Public art is inherently a cultural weapon. It’s best to be at a level where people feel they can relate to it. I take the term “monument” in terms of my own work. Monuments are people – mostly white – on pedestals. White or Black or whatever, that removes them from human existence. Ed Johnson and his lawyers are there, at ground level. You walk towards them. You walk among them.
How is your personal style reflected in this monument?
I prefer forms that are more poetic than prose, that pull you away from yourself but force you to think, What should this be? Ed’s arms are a little over the top because he’s a worker. Noah [Parden]Coming to Washington, standing like a warrior. He looks at the bridge to keep his sight stable. Noah is courage. Styles [Hutchins] is compassion. She reaches out, except for the fact that she can’t hold on to Ed.
When you first designed Ed Johnson’s sculpture, no one knew what it looked like. What did you want to tell from your face?
Ed’s face was the hardest part of this entire project. It made it easier in a way as you read the story and you know what he went through. I struggle with my own anger as I try to form his face. But I realized I couldn’t just turn him into an angry Black man. If you project anger forward in terms of discourse and interaction, it will only create more chaos. But if you project dignity forward, that’s what allowed these individuals to survive all this horror, all this mistreatment. His eyes are on the situation. He rose above all this. The noose is a hot spot when it comes to racial injustice. I hope this will spark a conversation that calls for some degree of perspective, if not accountability.
After it started, a photo of Ed Johnson surfaced. Did you feel pressured to change the job?
I’m less concerned with whether he looks like Denzel Washington or Uncle Joe, and more about his demeanor. Standing before this greedy crowd that insisted on admitting this young man’s guilt, he said, “God bless you all. I’m an innocent man.” There’s a story that goes beyond certain physical details. I was working on it in my studio and suddenly this photo popped up. You can’t even see half of his face. To me, this photo is dubious at best. I believe I’ve succeeded Ed Johnson – not just his face. , also in her stance. She takes away from this experience. She reaches forward with her hand so you can hold her hand and feel that you are with her.
The Ed Johnson Memorial will open as communities in the South demolish ancient monuments of the Confederacy. What do you think of this racial and historical moment of reckoning?
These Confederate monuments were not designed, developed, or sanctioned the way Ed Johnson did. You have a different cross-section of a community that comes together and says, “It’s worth it.” One of the things I find unacceptable is seeing the crowd falsify public art. At some point, a mob mindset may decide Ed Johnson is unacceptable. If we can falsify or subvert a culture’s idea of symbolism, then what can prevent a different group from feeling entitled to do the same? I’d rather see what happened in Richmond, Va., where the cultural meaning of these monuments was understood to be offensive and it was decided that they should be politically removed. The difference is between a winch that lifts it as opposed to the ropes that pull it down and kick it into the river.
Do you think it is important that this piece was designed by an American Black artist?
Yeah. My upbringing and environments seem to have had this calling that really put me in this orbit. I witnessed police brutality. In the late ’70s, I witnessed the shooting of a young Black man in handcuffs on the ground. I lived in an environment where this hopelessness was rampant. If you don’t have these [in your life] maybe the emotional or psychological connection isn’t that deep.
[ad_2]
Source link