On 17 acres on the Alabama River, the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is the most recent of the three Legacy sites developed by the Equal Justice Initiative, and you have arrived. Starting in 2021 EJI acquired 17 acres on the Alabama River to erect the National Monument to Freedom, and this place opened on March 27, 2024. Ahead of you is a 43 feet tall, 155 feet long wall that depicts 122,000 surnames adopted by the 4.7 million formerly enslaved African Americans listed on the 1870 United States census, the first census to list African Americans entirely as free people.
Near the monument, QR codes allow you to find other African Americans listed in later censuses with the same surname. The park also brings together 170-year-old dwellings from nearby cotton plantations, objects made by enslaved persons, replicas of rail cars and holding pens, and audio recordings of people speaking the Muscogee language, the language of the indigenous people of the park's area. Scattered here are sculptures created by Charles Gaines, Alison Saar, Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, Rose B. Simpson, Theaster Gates, Kehinde Wiley, and Hank Willis Thomas.
Notice the river, the monumental wall, the historic dwellings, and the sculptures gathered along this path.