Delayed for many years, Lexington’s Underground Railroad monument closer to reality | Opinion

Nearly a decade ago, a friend of mine named Sherry Maddock read a biography of Lewis Hayden.

She was enthralled, as most people are, by the story of Hayden and his wife, Harriet, an enslaved couple in Lexington who in 1844 made a daring escape up North Limestone to Maysville, then across the Ohio River to freedom.

They were helped by two white Northerners, Delia Webster and Calvin Fairbanks, who worked for the Underground Railroad and were later imprisoned in Kentucky for their crime of helping the Haydens escape.

The Haydens moved to Boston where he became a well-known abolitionist, public speaker and Underground Railroad conductor who helped numerous people escape slavery, including the daring rescue of a former slave from jail, where he’d been arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act.

There’s so much more about Lewis Hayden — my former colleague, Tom Eblen, wrote a two part series on him here and here— and scholarship is turning up new and fascinating things about Lewis and Harriett every day.

Maddock decided the Haydens and all the other people who escaped deserved a monument, and where better than the corner of Fourth and Limestone, the very street where the Haydens made their escape intersected with the new Legacy Trail?

She talked to neighbors like Larry Kezele, who loved the idea. Meetings were held, momentum was made and then the fates intervened. Maddock and her husband moved back to his native Australia.

Kezele, the owner of Ruth Hunt Candy, was overtaken with business and personal concerns. The pandemic, of course.

But Kezele, who lives on North Lime near the proposed site at Lexington Traditional Magnet School, never forgot about the idea. So when life calmed down, he started talking about the project again.

He formed a committee, attached it to the umbrella of LexArts, and started to talking to historians and artists like Yvonne Giles and Garry Bibbs, and to the Fayette Schools, which needed to give the easement to sit on the LTMS land.

Now the Lexington Freedom Train project is taking very definitive shape. The committee, chaired by Kezele, issued a request for qualifications for artists . They got 96 responses and have narrowed it down to four nationally renowned sculptors: Norman Lee of Houston; Basil Watson of Lawrenceville Georgia; the Humanity Award Public Team in Sutton, West Virginia; and Steven Whyte of Carmel, California.

All four artists will make their final proposals at a public event at the Lyric Theater on March 13, and public comment will be welcomed.

“I think this opens up a new narrative for Lexingtonians to talk about the period of enslavement without always focusing on the all the negative, because this man took it upon himself to plan and execute with the help of abolitionists an escape that propelled him to a national figure who also helped other enslaved people,” said Giles, who is continuing to research the Haydens.

“To me it’s a more positive story.”

Part of what Giles is researching is the story of Hayden’s first wife and their son, who were owned by U.S. Sen. Henry Clay. He sold them to the deep South, and Hayden never saw them again, which partly is why he wanted to risk escape.

Kezele thinks that many Lexingtonians, like himself, have never heard the story of Hayden or Lexington’s role in the Underground Railroad. Not to mention Fairbanks and Webster, two white people who went to prison for their beliefs.

“This monument will help tell these untold stories of many more people who escaped and what happened to them,” Kezele said.

Maury Sparrow is a vice-president of advancement at LexArts, but he was so inspired by the project that he asked to serve on the committee.

“We feel very strongly this needs to be more than just a monument,” he said. “It’s an evergreen idea that will continue to educate folks about the history.”

Sparrow said the entire project will cost about $500,000. Of that, close to half has already been raised: an anonymous donor has pledged $100,000, the Knight Donor Advised Fund at the Blue Grass Community Foundation and Community Ventures Corporation have promised $50,000 matching grants.

But that leaves about $250,000 for grassroots fundraising from all of us. This project needs our help, but the organizers also think it is compelling enough to get it. You can donate at www.lexfreedomtrain.org

“When you tell the story, that’s where you get traction,” Sparrow said.

At a time when local and national politicians are trying to deny the facts of our history — pretend that this country was not founded on the original sin of slavery whose stains have lasted until today — this project is a wonderful way to pay homage to the facts.

The grassroots campaign to raise money for it will start next month, and I feel Lexington will respond with generosity for something so important.

I emailed Sherry Maddock in Australia about the project she started so many years ago.

“It gives me great joy to know that this art memorial has support and determination behind it,” she wrote back. “It is essential to Lexington’s story.”