Memorial Pays Tribute to Some Americans That History Overlooked

Salem Poor. Tobias Pero. Thomas Sacket. Prince Duplex. Jeff Liberty.

They were among the 5,000 African-American soldiers who fought in the American Revolutionary War--but who have never been memorialized in marble or bronze.

The Black Patriots Memorial, which is to be built on the National Mall in Washington, is designed to rectify that oversight, and to commemorate the soldiers’ role in the struggle for freedom from the British. A replica of part of the proposed 90-foot-long monument will beshown today and Saturday at the Turf Club at Hollywood Park in Inglewood.

The public can view the replica between 1 and 5 p.m. both days. An artist’s reception honoring sculptor Ed Dwight is scheduled for tonight from 6 to 9 at the club. There is no admission charge for the reception or the viewing.

“This is the first time it has been seen publicly,” said Dwight, the Denver artist chosen to create the bronze memorial.

The Black Patriots Memorial, as the monument is known, was authorized by Congress in 1986, and a year later land was set aside for it between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, near the Vietnam Memorial.

The Inglewood event, Dwight said, kicks off a national tour in which the replica will travel to Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans and Chicago in late fall, in part to help raise the $6 million needed to build the monument.

“For some reason,” said Dwight, the first people who gathered to form the foundation “had the feeling that white corporate America should build this.”

But Dwight has other ideas about that.

“Black Americans should pay for it,” he said, explaining that he hopes every black American, children included, will give what they can for the monument.

Dwight says he envisions the day when black children will travel to Washington to see the completed monument, which will depict scenes ranging from the arrival of the first black person in America in the 16th Century with European explorers to the Revolutionary War.

In between will be scenes of the first slaves arriving in 1619, of the black people who set up shops in northern cities, and of the Boston Massacre, in which a black man named Crispus Attucks died. The stories of black men, women and children alike will be memorialized in bronze.

“There’s a lot of kids in this memorial,” Dwight said. “I want to see black kids see images of themselves in this.”