Under the Dome podcast: How ‘I Can’t Breathe’ ended up at NC Freedom Park

Start your week in #ncpol #ncga with our latest Under the Dome politics podcast. Dawn Vaughan here, your News & Observer Capitol bureau chief and podcast host.

For the week of Aug. 28, 2023, I talk with retired UNC Chapel Hill history professor Reginald Hildebrand and N.C. Sen. Natalie Murdock about the new North Carolina Freedom Park in downtown Raleigh. Hildebrand and Murdock both served key roles on the park’s planning.

The pair explained why “I can’t breathe,” the words spoken by George Floyd before being killed by Minneapolis police in 2020, is among the quotations inscribed on the walls of the new park.

Freedom Park leaders decided what historical quotations to include in a park that honors the African American struggle for freedom — including some very recent history.

“I think the more that we thought about it, we wanted it to be quotes that will outlive one specific moment,” Murdock said.

“Particularly for me being a millennial, I felt that that was the moment of our time: Particularly when I say young people, I mean elementary, middle school, will remember where they were when they saw the video of George Floyd being murdered,” she said.

“Remember that pain in his voice, the angst in his voice, and how in the midst of a pandemic, it rallied people to say, we’ve got to do something about police brutality.”

The “I can’t breathe” inscription on the park wall is near the entrance to the park on Wilmington Street, across the street from the Legislative Building.

“You see it as you enter the park, because I think it’s also unfortunately, sobering, because it’s a moment that showed us how much farther we have to go,” she said.

Listen to the entire episode to hear more of what Murdock and Hildebrand had to say about the quotations, site selection and other aspects of the new downtown destination, including the Beacon of Freedom at its center.

Hildebrand said North Carolina Poet Laureate Jackie Shelton Green’s poem about the Beacon of Freedom “serves the purpose for the beacon that Emma Lazarus’ poem does for the Statue of Liberty. ‘Send me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ And our counterpoint from George Floyd is ‘I can’t breathe.’”

“His uncle, Roger Floyd, during the opening, was sitting by that quote on the bench there,” Hildebrand said. “There were three cousins of Julius Chambers, who gathered around [Chambers’] quote. These were meetings that I’ve hadn’t fully anticipated — what these things might mean to family members..”

Listen to or watch the podcast to hear more about what the legacy of the park may be, as well as the status of the African American monument on the Capitol grounds, a separate project that has been stalled since the George Floyd protests of 2020, when protesters tore down some Confederate statues.

Headliner of the Week

Stay tuned to the end for our picks for Headliner of the Week. Both my pick and Murdock’s are education-related, as this is the week that traditional-calendar public schools begin the year. And Hildebrand notes a potential major shakeup in the 2024 election with the resignation of N.C. Supreme Court Justice Michael Morgan, as well as the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.

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