Published Dec. 4, 1997, in the Herald-Journal.
They are beautiful, if haunting, images, carved out of the earth in a way that demands we remember the artists. It was a way for oppressed, powerless and desperate people to say, "We were here." The faces carved in the walls of the old Wesleyan Methodist Church at Columbus Circle are tangible pieces of history. They are the expressions of people who were on their way from bondage to freedom. They are faces of hope.
We learned recently that the faces may be moved, taken out of the basement that sheltered former slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad and sent all the way to Ohio to be part of a museum there. Perhaps that is the best thing for them. The planned $70 million museum may be the only place with the dedication and the practical means to preserve the faces, to do what their carvers hoped, to memorialize them.
The faces need an immediate $250,000 rescue, which Carl B. Westmoreland, a director of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio has committed to pay for. Beyond that, full restoration and display costs could run into the millions.
A group of people who hope to keep the faces in Syracuse has started meeting, making plans to raise money. We wish them well. It would be a shame for Central New York to lose what really is a living link with the past. But we are saddened that even if a group of dedicated volunteers succeeds, even if the faces are restored and remain here, there is no good place for them. The legacy of Syracuse's abolitionists, of its status as a stop on the Underground Railroad is largely invisible here.
The Jerry Rescue monument, a piece with much to admire, offers little context. It freezes one moment, retells one courageous act. But there is so much more. How might a visitor here learn about something of which we all should be proud? It was a time when a group of Syracusans were on the right side of history, a time when they took risks, stood firm for their belief that people should not be enslaved.
The founding pastor of the Wesleyan church, built in 1848, wrote in his autobiography that helping fugitive slaves get to Canada and freedom was the largest work of his life.
"I passed as many as 30 slaves through my hands in a month," he said. The building of the church he founded survives, but the stories of that proud work largely do not.
What is really needed is a place where those stories could be told. African-American history is American history. And it is one that should be preserved. We cannot shrink from the time when people were brought here in chains, when laws were passed denying them the very freedoms this country was built on. As people of different races trying to live together, we will simply not come to understand each other if we cannot acknowledge that past.
We hope the preservation group that wants to keep the faces here will succeed. But it will take a lot more than they can do. It will take commitments from government leaders, and it will take a lot of money. Syracusans rose up and did the right thing more than 100 years ago. We believe their descendents can do the same.