Public art won’t end injustice
But it can affirm what we believe in
My weekly prayers have been “en plein air,” as the French Impressionists would say. In this type of prayer, we take the canvass of our heart out into the public square. We take off our shoes and listen quietly to the world in which we live — the good and the bad.
After the tragic death of George Floyd, I arrived early for our march for racial justice in Old Saybrook in early
July. I sat down in the shade and contemplated how our communities could respond.
One can learn a lot about families and what they value by observing what they hang on their walls. What’s true of families is also true of our nation. Public art says a lot about the values of our civilization. Regardless of what we do about Columbus and Confederate generals, what if we could create statues, celebrating some of the great Black heroes who too often are remembered only during Black history week?
Old Saybrook is the birthplace of Yale College. Could we persuade Yale University to build a statue of James Pennington, the first Black graduate of Yale? He escaped from slavery at the age of 19 and, like Harriet Tubman, not only freed himself but went on to become an abolitionist.
We should know these stories, our children should know these stories, and if they were part of our public art, they would remind us of our true values as a nation, not what we were in some golden age that never was, not what we are now, but rather what we endeavor to be .
slave auctionA was once held at the corner of Main Street and Boston Post Road in Old Saybrook. What if Black artists could be commissioned to build a statue there? Maybe of Thurgood Marshall. As a lawyer for the NAACP, Marshall logged over 50,000 miles per year to represent those struggling for justice and civil rights. I see him standing next to a car — my preference would be a Studebaker.
Out in front of Center School in Old Lyme, what if a young Black artist could create a statue of 6-year-old Ruby Bridges? I see families walking past that statue and I hear children asking their parents, “who was Ruby Bridges?” “Well, let me tell you,” they say as they sit down on a bench next to the statue. “Ruby was escorted to school by federal marshals. She was the only Black child in an all-white school. She walked with remarkable dignity past angry people who spat upon her and shouted racial epithets. No parents would allow their white children to be in Ruby’s class, but Barbara Henry, a white teacher from Boston, lovingly taught Ruby for the entire year, even though she was the only student in the classroom.”
We need such stories, and at this time when there’s so much anger and indignation, we need positive ways to channel our energy.
I thought of a diptych, with one canvas showing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., as it was in March 7, 1965, when John Lewis led 600 people in a march across the
bridge and into a bloody confrontation with police — and the other canvas showing it bearing up people of every color and renamed after the man who symbolically led us all across it.
In my prayer en plein air, I imagined that such public art would be financed by everyone, as if we all had baskets full of $20 bills that we could redeem for the art we wished for (and those $20 bills would have the face of Harriet Tubman on them, not Andrew Jackson).
As I was sitting there on the Old Saybrook green, I also remembered with prayers of thanksgiving our church’s friendship and partnership with the Madry Temple, a predominantly Black congregation in New London.
We got to know each other through a remarkable woman, Rachel Robinson. Her husband was the great baseball player who wore #42. While many people know and admire Jackie Robinson, the world doesn’t know enough about this woman of remarkable intelligence and dignity. After her husband died, Rachel founded the
Jackie Robinson Foundation, which has provided thousands of academic scholarships for those most in need.
Our predominantly White congregation and our friends at the Madry Temple got to know her when she donated land in Salem to Habitat for Humanity, and our two congregations teamed up to build that house and several others. Not only were these houses built, but it also brought our two congregations close together. We had church picnics and played volleyball; we had jazz concerts en plein air to celebrate the building of those houses.
What if we were to commission a statue of Rachel Robinson? For Rachel’s statue, like the statue of John Henry, I’d show her with a carpenter’s hammer in one hand and a book in the other.
We need such stories. We need to remember such heroes of the human spirit. Public art will not solve systemic racial injustice, but it would be a public affirmation — this is the country that we love, and this is the country we endeavor to become.