Designing for Dignity: Convening Conversations on the Art of Racial Healing

Elizabeth Webb & Salaam Green

A roomful of over 40 descendants and guests participated in poet Salaam Green’s and artist Elizabeth M. Webb conversation about the community co-created sculpture using two columns saved from the Wallace House preservation and the role of poetry in the process. Salaam Green brought the group together invoking the presence of the ancestors and descendants wrote their messages to them on paper that dissolved in water. The water containing the no-longer-visible messages was then poured into the ground to nurture a cedar tree that had seen generations of Wallaces.