CHICAGO CRUSADER -- Fountain

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Beneath The Baobab Tree

This work pictured here is part of Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim installation.

Beneath the Baobab tree,

There is too much pain 

To calculate 

To ingest

Almost to speak of

Too much horror 

To comprehend 

And yet, 

I listen 

To their salted tears

That drift upon the winds 

Across the sands 

In this land

That speak 

from beneath

red clay dirt

The color 

of faded blood

"Upon Their Faces" - An Exhibit, A Lesson in History to Never Forget

These are among the stunning images at the Nkyinkyim Museum in Ghana.

Written after visiting the Nkyinkyim installation by Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo. The exhibit, which has more than 1,700 cement effigies in a field, seeks to create a total of 11,111, in remembrance and honor of Africans who were enslaved.

By John W. Fountain

Within these ancestral faces

Of horror

Of shock

Of anguish

And of pain

Lie history's shame

Unforgivable

Almost unspeakable

Unforgettably enshrined

upon these hallowed grounds