June 19, or Juneteenth, has long been the day to mourn lives lost in the African slave trade and to celebrate the emancipation of the enslaved in the United States. Attempts to make it a federal holiday have long been thwarted — until, in a shocking rush, Congress passed the law and President Joe Biden signed it, making Friday, June 18, 2021 its first federal observance.
The same day, San Francisco unveiled Dana King’s work “Monumental Reckoning,” 350 sculptures that represent the first people sold into slavery and brought from Africa to America in 1619.
(Update: Dana King spoke to The Frisc two days after the ceremony. Her comments are included below.)
“I hope it serves as an educational tool where people dig deeper into American history and their own history and where they come from,” says King. “This is about representation. Every culture deserves to be seen in the public realm, and that’s why I sculpt. Sculpture inhabits space, and space is power.”
The ceremony was all the more stirring with the sudden and long overdue federal recognition of Juneteenth. The seed of the installation was planted a year ago, on Juneteenth 2020, when protesters pulled down a statue of Francis Scott Key, a slave owner and composer of “The Star Spangled Banner.” But it wasn’t until the end of January 2021 when a proposal set King in motion.
Now her statues surround the plinth where Key’s statue once stood — and which still bears a snippet of the words he wrote: “O’er the land of the free.”
Photographs are by the SF-based photographer Tommy Lau.
Dana King: “I create with my ancestors in mind. Those ancestors have my grandmother’s braid. She braided her hair every night. That was the only way to infuse the story of my people, which is no different than all other African Americans. We’ve never not thought about our ancestors. They are responsible for every step we take.”
“These ancestors were women. There were men and children on board that ship, but there was a notch of terror above it all that only women experienced.
The beauty of the faces as just simply black is to let people see themselves and their history. It’s intentional that they don’t have facial features. It’s two-fold: our descendants were invisible in the building of this country, and because they were invisible they could be treated inhumanely.”
Dana King: “Ben Davis contacted me on Jan 31, 2021. The project started then. We didn’t get materials until the middle of April. It was a seven-week process to get them installed — remarkably fast. It was a tiny but mighty crew of people. And it was all privately funded. It feels like a dream. Part of me can’t fathom doing something so grand, but it’s proof that when you’re called, answering is the only answer.”
Dana King: “The holiday felt like it came out of nowhere, but it’s been the desire and the active effort of many people to see it realized. It’s not a celebration. It’s a commemoration. We don’t celebrate the Rwandan genocide; we commemorate it. And what our descendants experienced was a genocide.
I’m glad it’s a federal holiday, but we need equity in all arenas of life. Food injustice, critical justice, housing, banking, corporate America. A holiday is wonderful, but Black Americans need a conversation around race. Without acknowledgement of the harm, we won’t have reconciliation.”
Tommy Lau is a photographer based in San Francisco.