October 2, 2009
Bench by the Road Project To Honor Freedom Summer Workers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Contact: Carolyn Denard, Toni Morrison Society, Atlanta
Atlanta. Ga---The Toni Morrison Society will place the third bench in its Bench by the Road Series in the city of Hattiesburg on Saturday, October 3rd. The Bench by the Road Project is a Memorial History Initiative launched by the Toni Morrison Society in 2006 to memorialize historic and often unmarked sites in African American History in both the U.S. and abroad. The first bench in the series was placed on Sullivan's Island, the port of entry of nearly 40% of Africans who entered North America. The second bench was placed in Oberlin, Ohio, a place of refuge for those escaping slavery via a network of covert passages known as the Underground Railroad. The third bench to be dedicated during the Historic Mobile Street Renaissance Festival will honor those who worked during the summer of 1964 to register voters in Mississippi during what is historically known now as Freedom Summer. The bench placement will occur at 11:00 AM this Saturday on Mobile Street during the Historic Mobile Street Renaissance Festival. The Bench Placement in Hattiesburg is being sponsored by the Rhythm Heritage Foundation.
The idea for the Bench by the Road Project had its origins in Morrison's remarks about her fifth novel Beloved in a 1989 interview: "There is no place that you and I can go to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves; nothing that reminds us of the ones who made the journey and of those who did not make it. There is no suitable memorial or plaque or wreath or wall or park or skyscraper lobby. There's no three-hundred foot tower. There's no small bench by the road. There's not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit or you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence or better still on the banks of the Mississippi. And because such a place doesn't exist, the book had to."(The World Magazine, 1989)
"What Toni Morrison wanted her novel to do for a particular moment in African American history," explains Society President Yvonne Atkinson," has become the mission of the Toni Morrison Society on a larger scale. We not only want to study her novels, but we also want to bring the impact of Morrison's understanding of African American life and history, captured in her writing, to the public square. The Bench by the Road Project is one way to do that. We want to provide ways for people in local communities to have a way to easily access the history that is literally all around them. With the bench, they can sit down and reflect on that history and share it with others."
Hattiesburg will join an elite group of sites with its bench placement on Saturday. Other cities where Bench by the Road sites have been approved and will be placed over the next three years include New York City; Nicodemus, Kansas; Washington D.C.; Lorain, Ohio; Montgomery, Alabama; Cincinnati, Ohio; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Atlanta, Georgia; and, internationally, on Goree Island in Ghana and in Capetown, South Africa. The Society would like to also place benches at two other Mississippi sites: the hometown of Fannie Lou Hamer in Ruleville and the Emmet Till Park in Glendora. All sites will be submitted for approval as sites to be added to the National Registry of Historic Places
"The Historic Mobile Street Renaissance Festival," says Society Founder and Co-Chair of the Bench by the Road Project Carolyn Denard, "is the perfect place to have the bench dedication that commemorates the very important work of Freedom Summer and those who volunteered to make it happen. The Festival has become a way to remind and teach members of the community of the rich history of African American entrepreneurship and grass roots activism in Hattiesburg. Without people like those who worked in Hattiesburg and other cities like it throughout the South in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement would not have been successful. The Bench by the Road that will be placed on Mobile Street on Saturday will affirm the historical significance of what happened there and serve as a permanent and accessible site of memory for generations to come."
The Toni Morrison Society, named for Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, is a non-profit literary and cultural organization founded in 1993 to sponsor and encourage public programs and scholarships that focus on the works of Toni Morrison. For more information on the Society and the Bench by the Road Project please visit www.tonimorrisonsociety.org.