The Underground Railroad statue along the river in Detroit depicts an important part of the city's history, but the story behind the man who created the 11-foot- tall, multi-figure statue also offers an interesting glimpse into African American history and achievement.
Sculptor Ed Dwight is the son Ed Dwight Sr., once a second baseman for the Kansas City Monarchs of the segregated Negro League before another Monarch, Jackie Robinson, broke the color barrier in major league baseball.
The younger Dwight, born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1933, had a talent in art, but his father discouraged him from attending art school because he felt the racism of the day would make it especially difficult the younger man to make a living as an artist.
Young Ed Dwight joined the Air Force in 1953 and earned a degree in aeronautical engineering while working as a test pilot.
Dwight became the first African American accepted into the United States' astronaut training program in 1962 after a recommendation to President John F. Kennedy. He passed the first phase of his training as a test pilot in 1963.
Kennedy's death in late 1963 seemed to stall Dwight's career as an astronaut and he resigned from the program in 1966. (It wasn't until 1983 that Guion Bluford became the first African American astronaut to travel into space).
Dwight began to reconsider a career as an artist and received a commission that would change his life in 1974.
George Brown, the first African American lieutenant governor of Colorado, asked Dwight to create a sculpture of him for Colorado's state capitol building. This was Dwight's first professional job as a sculptor. Brown felt Dwight could help document the often unknown contributions of African Americans to our country's history through sculpture and challenged Dwight to quit an IBM sales job to sculpt full time.
In 1975, Dwight earned a master of fine arts degree from the University of Denver.
By 1987, some of his commissions for a single piece began to top $250,000.
In 2001, Dwight won a competition to design the International Memorial to the Underground Railroad. Detroit 300, a non-profit group organizing events to celebrate Detroit's tricentennial, commissioned him to create two pieces of public art, with one in Detroit's Hart Plaza and a companion piece on the other side of the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario.
Dwight's "Gateway to Freedom" bronze-and-granite sculpture in Detroit was dedicated on October 20, 2001 and includes a group of slaves preparing to cross the river to freedom in Canada with one of the railroad's "conductors" pointing out the route.
The conductor is George DeBaptiste, born in 1815 into a wealthy family of free blacks in Virginia. DeBaptiste had a barber shop in Indiana and served as President William Henry Harrison's personal valet during his 1840 presidential campaign. DeBaptiste moved to Detroit after mid-1840s riots targeting free black leaders left him with a bounty on his head in Indiana. An estimated 45,000 escaped slaves used the Underground Railroad through Michigan, and DeBaptiste helped many of them gain freedom by crossing the river to Canada via the railroad's "Midnight" (Detroit) station.
Dwight is now in his late 70s and still maintains a 25,000-square-foot studio, foundry and gallery space in Denver. His lifetime output includes at least 120 memorials, monuments and public art installations as well as more than 18,000 gallery level sculptures.
Dwight's public pieces in the Midwest include: Bronze Blues sculptures in Chicago Blues district, the Soldiers Memorial at Lincoln University in Jefferson (Missouri), Jack Trice Memorial at Iowa State University in Hiram, a statue of Mayor Harold Washington in Chicago, a statue of Captain Walter Dyett in Chicago, Concerto at the Follies Theater in Kansas City (Missouri), an Underground Railroad memorial at the Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek (Michigan), and a memorial to George Washington Williams (Ohio's first African American legislator) at the State Capitol in Columbus.
Want to learn more about the history of the Underground Railroad in the Midwest? Check out my stories Visit the Hubbard House, an Underground Railroad station in Ashtabula, Ohio and Are you waiting?, the story of our visit to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Also be sure to check out Soaring on the Wings of a Dream: The Untold Story of America's First Black Astronaut Candidate by Ed Dwight.
© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved
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