Ed Dwight – Monument Designer
I am honored to be considered for the designing and building of this historically important project for the Mississippi Delta. I have a wealth of experience in the design and development of such projects and hope to bring my creative skills and background to bear to provide a full visual expression of the African American involvement in the historical landscape of the Delta.
It is with great excitement that I approach the design of this memorial to those Black Slaves, Freedmen, & Sharecroppers, whose years of toil & labor, picked the cotton, farmed the land, built & enriched America, for nothing in return. This memorial will also be dedicated to the Black heroes & heroines that fought valiantly and died to bring justice & Civil Rights to the Mississippi Delta, and to all America.
Historically, my first art series was entitled “Black Frontier Spirit in the American West,” where I depicted the Buffalo Soldiers, Black Pioneers, Frontiersmen, Trappers, & Cowboys in every environment possible. The series was composed of some 50 images of the Black contribution to the opening of the West, including the eighteen Black Medal of Honor recipients. Since this initial effort, I have created 108 monuments, memorials, & public art installations.
Other major commissions include the South Carolina African American History Memorial, Two Underground Railroad Memorial, Several Dr. King Memorials, the John hope Franklin Memorial, dedicated the 1921 Tulsa Riots, and most recently the official Inaugural Scene: The “Inauguration of Hope,” honoring the historic inaugural of President Obama, his family & Chief Justice John Roberts.
Monument Design Concept
My overall theme is to include in visual, graphic, and textual form, a rigorous history of the African American “Cotton Picking” and farm labor experience in the Mississippi Delta. This will include A monumental central theme, as well as a “History Walk”
through the slave experience from arrival in America through the intense struggle & dark days of hopeless despair of the slave consciousness, to the limited freedom accorded by Emancipation, to the hope of the Movement initiated by the Black visionaries that gave so much for the ultimate freedom of all. It is critical that the objective memorial is to instill a sense of what I call “History & Hope.” Using the experience of History to define a new sense of Hope.
