Tayari's Blog: For 60 Million, And More
Posted by TayariJones on July 28, 2008 12:10 PM
Filed under
Current Events
Toni Morrison has dedicated a memorial to the men and women whose 
lives were damaged by slavery. The memorial is a simple one, an iron bench. This bench is the first in ten which will make up the "Bench By The Road" project.
One of her favorite sites for a bench would be in Oberlin, Ohio, a stop on the Underground Railroad near her hometown of Lorain, she said. While a number of museums dedicated to black history have sprung up around the country since 1989, as well as much new scholarship about black history Ms. Morrison said she liked the idea of an “unpretentious” bench for its simplicity and accessibility.“Well, the bench is welcoming, open,” she said. “You can be illiterate and sit on the bench, you can be a wanderer or you can be on a search.”
The rest of the article here.
Thanks to my daddy for sending the link.
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Comment #1, by Caroline Wilkinson ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tayarijones.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
I love that photo.
A week ago, I went on a tour of stations in the Underground Railroad in Albany, New York. The tour was led by a couple, Paul and Mary Liz Stewart, and largely was based on their original research. I recommend it to anyone in the area. (Their website is: http://www.ugrworkshop.com/)
On a literary note, the Stewarts talked about the connection between two Albany residents: Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville. Referencing the research of Robert Wallace, the Stewarts said that the two men seem to have been influencing each other's work. While there's no evidence that they met, their writing apparently shows that they were reading each other.
July 29, 2008 12:14 PM