3/6/2023 0 Comments Freedom statue“When you look at the shackles, you see that the shackles are broken,” Howard said, “and that’s to show that they are never to be chained again.” If you look closely at the statue’s base, you’ll notice a pair of shackles. “With that foot on top of it,” he said, “this is not to be anymore.”Īnd there’s more. Howard intended for the soldier’s foot on the stump to convey an aspect of hope, and an end to the injustices of the past. You’ll see the bark where it’s separating from the stump.” And I have the tree as though the tree is deteriorated. “The tree has been removed,” he continued. They were sold and they were treated like animals.” Not only were they there for sale, but they were there beaten with whips - we all know about that- and chains. “That stump is meant to represent, as far as I’m concerned, the tree of sorrow - a tree on which men were tied to, children were tied to for sale. “The way I have the soldier, I have him with his foot up on a stump,” he said. “I know what that’s like.”Īfter meditating on the injustices faced by America’s Black population through the decades, Howard found ways to incorporate their struggle into his sculpture. “I have some idea of what it’s like not to be able to go to a restaurant, not to be able to get served at a filling station to get gas,” he said. Before there was a Selma or any other type of march that happened where black people had to stand up for their own freedoms, they marched.”Īt 73, Howard still remembers the days when Black residents were openly treated like second-class citizens in Tennessee. “Before they fought, they marched,” he explained. But it also speaks to the reality that African-Americans had to continue marching for their freedom long after the Civil War ended. Yes, it refers to soldiers from the United States Colored Troops who marched into battle to fight against Confederate soldiers. During a panel discussion on The Fuller Story at the Franklin Theatre, Howard told the audience that the title of his work has multiple meanings. It begins with the statue’s name: March to Freedom. But according to its sculptor, Joe Frank Howard who was born in nearby Paris, Tennessee, and now lives in Ohio, there’s much more to his masterpiece than first meets the eye. The statue depicts a man in Civil War uniform standing with one foot on a stump, a rifle across his knee. Led by three local pastors and a historian, the group has raised funds to add five new historical markers to Franklin’s downtown square, as well as a statue of an African-American soldier. The project to do so is aptly named The Fuller Story. The truth is, much of Franklin was built on the backs of its Black sons and daughters and in recent years, local residents have worked with city leaders to bring their stories into the light. Visitors to the town were regaled with cinematic Civil War-era stories of brave Confederate soldiers, beautiful socialite spies, and wealthy plantation families who hid in their cellars during the bloody Battle of Franklin, then heroically tended to thousands of grievously injured young men once that battle had ended.īut there’s another, more painful history here that until recently was seldom told – one of human trafficking and enslavement, brutality and lynching, survival and success despite seemingly impossible odds. For many decades, Franklin’s history was interpreted almost entirely through the lens of the wealthy white people who once lived here.
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