In the late ’90s, Faye Hersh Dambrot reached out to Woodrow Nash with a proposal: Could he create a statue of Sojourner Truth?
On paper, the plan seemed foolproof. Dambrot, a former professor at the University of Akron, helped launch the university’s women’s studies program and co-founded the Women’s History Project of the Akron Area. In the ’90s, Nash, an Akron native, was making a name for himself as a sculptor after decades working as an illustrator and graphic designer.
And then there was Sojourner Truth, the famed abolitionist and former slave who in 1851 delivered what would become her most celebrated speech (“Ain’t I a Woman?”) at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron.
Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza Unveiling
Wednesday, May 29, at 5:30 p.m.
37 N. High St.
Dambrot was not the first person to push for a public memorial honoring Truth. The idea originated from another group in the ’80s, but it never got its footing, said Towanda Mullins, chair of the Sojourner Truth Project.
Nash created a statue prototype, but like the initial committee that came up with the idea, Dambrot’s group struggled to get the project off the ground. When Dambrot died in 2000, the project stalled.
“It sat on the shelf for over 20 years,” Nash said of his prototype.
That was until 2019, when Mullins reached out to Nash, then in his mid-70s, with the goal of finally bringing the statue to fruition.
“I remember Woodrow mentioned to me upon approaching him. … ‘Are you guys gonna get it done this time? Will you be the committee after all these years [to] really bring this to light?’” Mullins said. “And I told him that we would.”
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In 2019, Mullins was part of a group of local women leaders who formed the Summit Suffrage Centennial. The goal was to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. Eventually, the committee shifted its focus to creating a public memorial for Truth and formed the Sojourner Truth Project with Mullins taking the lead.
“The community to me has been waiting for this,” Mullins said during a March interview at Nash’s Sweitzer Avenue studio.
The project is personal for Mullins, a lifelong Akronite with a long track record of leadership roles in various local organizations, among them the University of Akron’s Black Leadership Alumni Council, Summit County Historical Society’s board of directors and United Baptist Church.
Mullins learned about Truth’s famous speech as a child. She recounted a production in fifth grade where she didn’t get the role of Truth, but she did play the role of another famous abolitionist: Harriet Tubman.
“I always channeled, for some reason, the ancestors,” Mullins said. “I’ve always channeled what they did for me. I can’t let it go. … I just remember always playing back all they had to go through.”
Under Mullins’ leadership, the project grew from a statue to an entire plaza and secured funding from the Knight Foundation, Akron Community Foundation, City of Akron, Summit County and others.
United Way of Summit & Medina donated a parking lot on the north side of its North High Street office to the Sojourner Truth Project for use as the plaza. The Universalist Old Stone Church where the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention was held no longer stands, but the office and plaza sit roughly on the land where the church once was located. In 1981, an Ohio Historical Marker commemorating Truth’s speech was placed on the United Way building.
In an email, Andrew Leask, an associate vice president with United Way of Summit & Medina, said, “As of today, the cost of the project has been $2.519 million and United Way of Summit & Medina has contributed $1.024 million.”
Amidst personal setbacks for Nash, the Truth statue comes to life
When the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza is unveiled to the public Wednesday, May 29 — the same date Truth gave her speech 173 years ago — Nash’s statue will be the focal point of the 10,000-square-foot site.
Nash’s statue shows Truth at her full stature — she was nearly 6 feet tall — standing proud and erect. In Nash’s version, Truth looks the way she did in many photos, wearing a shawl over a long dress and a bonnet over her hair. Through bespectacled eyes, she stares straight ahead. In her hands, she holds a Bible.
“I didn’t want it to just be a cold bronze statue,” he said. “Most of the work that I do, people always say that I project [a] persona in the sculptures. And that’s what I wanted to do with this particular piece.”
Nash made the sculpture from clay, and then it was transferred to Studio Foundry in Cleveland, where it was cast in bronze. Nash said he wants the statue to serve as an “experience” for visitors to the plaza so they have a better understanding of Truth and her legacy.
Nash began working on this version of the statue in 2019, but midway through, he had a stroke that delayed his progress. He was hospitalized and went through physical therapy because he lost the use of his left side. (His dominant hand also happens to be his left.)
The ordeal left him discouraged, and he worried he wouldn’t be able to complete the statue. His wife encouraged him to keep working, though, and he started to view creating the statue as part of his physical therapy.
“It helped me get my motor skills together and learn how to walk again and everything like that,” Nash said. “I started feeling good about it again. I started gaining momentum and seeing the process come together.”
How the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza came together
Mullins was responsible for getting the Sojourner Truth Project off the ground, and Nash was responsible for bringing Truth to life. But Dion Harris was responsible for creating a public memorial that paid homage to Truth.
Harris, a landscape architect with Summit Metro Parks, presented an initial site plan to the Sojourner Truth Project in April 2021. He said there were practical matters to consider, such as working around the steps to make the plaza accessible, as well as creative ones, such as how to honor Truth in a way that is unique to Akron. It was no small feat, considering the number of monuments to Truth across the country, including one in the U.S. Capitol.
“She was so … unorthodox to the common slave narrative in America,” Harris said. “So that’s what made her very different for me, and I wanted to tell that truth. …People lump her in with everyone from the South and everyone from that movement. She had a different thing.”
At the Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza, a timeline of Truth’s life runs along the walkway that weaves around the site, beginning with her birth. Four pillars, each bearing a different quote and word – identity, activism, power and faith – flank a large impala lily that is made of bricks, inlaid on the ground. The lily is the national flower of Ghana, a nod to the homeland of Truth’s father. Nash’s statue will sit at the center of the flower.
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As it was for Mullins and Nash, this project became a personal one for Harris.
“It’s always been spiritual for me,” he said. “It came right at the right time in my life, personally, where I was heavy into what life really means for me. And to see her empower herself to be able to walk and do what she did. There’s no one who said, ‘Here’s your position.’ She said, ‘I’m taking my position.’”
“Sure did,” Mullins said.
In a 2013 post on the University of Akron’s website about Faye Hersh Dambrot, the last line reads, “Her final project was to memorialize the former slave Sojourner Truth and her famous speech ‘And Ain’t I a Woman?’ given at the Akron’s Wom[e]n’s Rights Convention in 1851.”
Twenty four years later, the project is finally ready for its public debut.
Editor’s note: The Knight Foundation, Akron Community Foundation and United Way of Summit & Medina are financial supporters of Signal Akron.