Man’s Dream of Black Hall of Fame Meeting Resistance in Philadelphia

Samuel Evans has a dream, to honor America’s slaves and other black heroes, but it is threatened by politics, lack of money and concerns over proper use of public land.

For him the controversy centers on race.

“It is a racial issue, and the whites are making it that,” he said, answering critics, including the city’s two daily newspapers, who object to using 40 acres of Philadelphia Fairmount Park land for his African American Hall of Fame. It would have 5,000 statues, including one of every black elected mayor.

“White people use that public land,” he said. “Why can’t black people use the land too? White people are sitting out there all over the park. Everything out there was put out there by white people, and I want to change that.”

At 83, he realizes he doesn’t have much longer to see his dream come true and will move it somewhere else in the United States “if Philadelphia doesn’t want it.”

Other Possible Sites

He said he would consider New York, Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, Jacksonville and Los Angeles, among other places, if turned down here.

“No little group is going to stop this,” Evans said, referring to some members of the 15-member park commission who have reservations about converting prime land in America’s largest urban park into a $23-million garden.

Evans said the garden would include about 25 fountains, thousands of statues, and a huge pyramid as “the tomb to the 10 million unknown African slaves who died in this country.”

(The Afro-American Encyclopedia says the slave population of the United States was 4 million at the beginning of the Civil War.)

“It will draw more people than anything we have in Philadelphia except Independence Hall,” he said. “This project will be carried forward no matter who protests. We will test every person on where they stand on black people’s contribution to this country.”

Among those who object is park Commissioner James Lloyd, a former Pennsylvania state senator who three years ago lost a bid for lieutenant governor.

Termed ‘Inappropriate’

Echoing the concerns of the Inquirer and the Daily News, Lloyd said: “To use public land to honor or glorify current political figures is a completely inappropriate course of action. Let Evans use private land.

“The second flaw is that there is no visible source of funding, private or public, for this project. It has the look of something that will be a financial burden to the taxpayers.

“The third flaw is that it calls for a 99-year lease of park land. A lease like that is really a gift. Even the zoo, which has been in the park for over a century, only has a 25-year lease.”

Evans said he’ll raise the money, and plans a drive that would collect a minimum of $10 each from 10 million people across the nation.

Evans is chairman of the Family of Leaders which he claims represenTs 180 major blacK organizations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, including fraternal and religious groups.

“I have endorsements from governors of 40 states,” Evans said. “I have letters from 20 mayors. This is a national thing. The taxpayers won’t foot the bill.”

Mayor Goode’s Support

Mayor W. Wilson Goode, the city’s first black mayor, has endorsed the idea as “a very positive symbol” but doesn’t think his statue should be included until he leaves office.

Goode said the project could be a major tourist attraction when Philadelphia celebrates the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution in 1987.

The Daily News said in an editorial, however, that the idea “sounds like the kind of thing Albert Speer, architect of the Reich, would have dreamed about after eating four pepperoni pizzas.”

The Inquirer, calling it “folly and flimflam,” sees it as “a Mount Rushmore in bronze paying ‘immortal honor’ to such mortals as Mayor Goode and City Council President Joseph Coleman.” It likened the request for $5 million from the U.S. Treasury as sticking a hand “in the federal-fund cookie jar.”

‘Political Turkey’

Lloyd said a bill by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) to appropriate the $5 million “is a political turkey that will never fly.”

Philadelphia has an Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, located on the edge of Independence Historical National Park, a block from the Liberty Bell. But Evans said the museum, built by the city during the 1976 Bicentennial celebration, is inadequate.

“What we’re talking about, when we build it, is one of the world’s wonders,” Evans said. “Black people don’t want a Mt. Rushmore. I have as much right to leave something behind me as Ben Franklin had or George Washington had. I’m not a second-class citizen.

“This project is the biggest presentation ever been proposed on the Western Hemisphere on the behalf of African-Americans. The Indians got some reparations, but we’re not asking for funds. We’re just asking the people of America to acknowledge the fact that we had 10 million African slaves die of natural causes during over 250 years of slavery in America. And today we cannot find one grave. That is a holocaust.

“We feel this will acknowledge unfinished business of the country, something it owes to the 30 million black people.”