SULLIVAN’S ISLAND, S.C. — Toni Morrison
has said that her acclaimed novel “Beloved,” which features the ghost
of a baby killed by her enslaved black mother, came out of the need for
a literature to commemorate slaves and their history. “There is no
suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath or wall, or park or skyscraper
lobby,” Ms. Morrison said in a 1989 magazine interview. “There’s no
300-foot tower, there’s no small bench by the road.”This weekend, on Sullivan’s Island, off the South Carolina coast,
Ms. Morrison, the Nobel laureate, and some 300 people held a memorial
ceremony to dedicate her long-awaited “bench by the road.” The crowd
included members of the Toni Morrison Society, National Park Service
rangers, Ms. Morrison’s friends and family, and people from Charleston
and nearby areas. They gathered Saturday afternoon under a blazing sun,
accompanied by the rhythms of African drums, for a service that
included the pouring of libations and a daisy wreath cast into the
water to remember their ancestors.“It’s never too late to honor
the dead,” said Ms. Morrison, 77, the author of eight novels, as she
sat down on the 6-foot-long, 26-inch-deep black steel bench facing the
Intracoastal Waterway. “It’s never too late to applaud the living who
do them honor,” she said. “This is extremely moving to me.”Sullivan’s Island, home to Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, was a point
of entry into North America for about 40 percent of the millions of
Africans who were enslaved in this country. Carlin Timmons, a park
ranger, said that all the estimates were rough, but that historians
believe 12 million to 15 million Africans came to the Americas and the
Caribbean. Of those 4 to 10 percent were brought to North America.The bench was secured by the National Park Service, which laid the
foundation that included a bronze plaque explaining its significance.
It was the first entry in the “Bench by the Road” project, created by
the Toni Morrison Society, a nonprofit group of scholars and readers
dedicated to examining Ms. Morrison’s work. The society, which was also
holding a conference in nearby Charleston, plans in the next five years
to call on individuals, corporations and community groups to help them
place benches at 10 sites.The spots under consideration have
significance in Ms. Morrison’s novels and in black history. They
include Fifth Avenue in Harlem, where the Silent Parade protesting the
East St. Louis, Ill., riots was held in 1917 (featured in the novel
“Jazz”) and the site of Emmett Till’s 1955 murder in Mississippi, which
helped galvanize the civil rights movement. SOURCE:NYT.COM