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''' '' RACISM FREE SOCIETY '' '''
THE KILLING OF GEORGE FLOYD HAS ADDED MOMENTUM to a years long movement to remove Confederate monuments and other US public statues that critics say promote white supremacy and racial discrimination.
Nationwide, nearly 800 Confederate monuments stand at county courthouses, town squares, state capitals and other public spaces, including 38 memorials dedicated after 2000.
SINCE JUNE 2015 - WHEN WHITE SUPREMACIST AND Confederate flag enthusiast Dylan Roof gunned down a Bible study group at a black church in Charleston, killing nine, 48 Confederate monuments have been removed, some under public protest, the Law Center said.
The toppling of Confederate statues in nationwide protests against racism brought renewed attention to the importance of US public monuments, very few of which were made by black sculptures.
Empty plinths have stirred debate over who and what should replace the toppled statues. Black sculptures and historians hope the aftermath will give communities around the country a chance to honour often-forgotten African-American trailblazers.
''Space is power. When a black body in bronze is placed publicly, that story is magnified because of the powerful space,'' said sculptor Dana King of Oakland, California.
''It allows children to look up into the faces of these sculptures and say, ''Who are you? And why are you standing before me?'', said King, who is set to unveil her public culture of William lanson, a former enslaved black man who worked to extend New Haven's Long Wharf, making Connecticut competitive with nearby New York.
Of the more than 5,000 public outdoor sculptures registered in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Art Inventories Catalogue, less than a quarter of the roughly 700 works in the ''Ethnic African-American'' category were made by black sculptors.
Similarly, fewer than half of the 75 US works included in ''Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past,'' a website run by University of Maryland Professor Renee Ater, were created by black sculptors.
''Part of the reason I went into figurative sculpture was to create works of art that represented people who look like me and look like a lot of New Yorkers who I see but I didn't see represented,'' said sculptor Branly Cadet.
Black sculptors bring a perspective that a white artist cannot, added Cadet, whose public statues highlight figures including New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr, who fought for pay equality and star athlete Jackie Robinson, who broke major League Baseball's color barrier.
''Statues and monuments reflect who and what we value as a nation,'' University of Pittsburgh historian Keisha Blain said. ''Building a racism free society requires making an active choice.
It took more than a decade of delays and debates for Savannah, Georgia, whose population is 50% black, to unveil in 2002 its first statue acknowledging its history as a major slave port.
Disputes raged over the memorials graphic inscription about slave ship horrors, as well as about the selected sculptor - a white professor from the prestigious Savannah College of Arts and Design.
Pittsburgh's Blain says that while removing symbols of oppression is vital, rememoralizing black lives in public is an important first step in the struggle to build a racism free society, which ultimately requires concrete changes to laws and public policy.
Some, including King, say it would be far more meaningful to let the resounding absence of statues in the wake of the protests catch the public's attention.
''All that space should be left alone for a while. We should sit with the raw sense of discomfort from the space left over from those torn down monuments and energy they left behind.''
The Honor and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Racism, continues. The World Students Society thanks authors, Reuters.
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