There were so many victims of ignorance and hatred. One day I saw so many
human beings suffering, I wanted to extend my hand or being part of them. It was Dr. King who set up my thoughts, he lay out the path to the future. That future was made of quilts and blood, that future was built on imaginary prisons andconcrete jungles, that
future was built on the fields of cotton, crops and tobacco. That future was America free of hatred and slavery.
WHITE DAY
Cowards have not recognized your misery,
the naked bodies that no one saw
are images in a red sea of hatred,
relinquish for dreams in memorial days.
Why are the dogs biting your skin?
the blood has fallen on streets of concrete,
some other on a green yard where roses will grow, but the starving dogs have not found your heart.
Why are the insects delighting your scars? though they place their mouths on politics food, some prefer the trash of landfills and dead bodies,
they are throwing up their indifference desert.
A old man kiss your land of violence
where the slaves are from Wall Street and Memphis.
Dr. King's words have not conquest the divisions, still people are hided in beer cans and wee.
Why your color has been profaned,
and your actions turned to the trash?
the black hero as become a clown
for those that do not believe in dreams.
Why your name was segregation?
they turn down your hope in a square mile, your color hided on winter skirts
and your tears to clean up their floors.
Sixty years have marked the news;
a front page with twelve kids in a death row, starving people forgotten waiting to die
and the news lady announcing her marriage.
Why have your pains been forgotten?
Some were put on sale in pawnshops,
others hanged on a Marty grass show
where the servants have pay to see them to die.
When they cut your face or tied your arms?
When there are not more chains to cut,
nor jails to demolish or cars to be burn,
there is a pen that needs to write and books to be read.
There is kid learning to speak on the white day, he does not know his future neither his past you wish you could see in the bright of his eyes that one day our skin will be one.
My proposal has three symbolic elements: the hill, the walled paths and the
memorial square. The hill is represented as the White Day. The White Day is a hill of cotton, it represents the long labor days that slaves surfed on the cotton fields. The cotton hill has two entrances, these are confining walled paths, they represent the long period where slaves had to suffer to be free. The maze path leads to the Memorial
Square to the victims of slavery in America. The Square represents the ghettos where they had to live, it represents all the kind of suffering, whether their privation of freedom to all the continuous violation of their human rights. The Memorial Square has four
white walls, this place can be used as multipurpose area or just has a place to
meditation. Although is conceived as a memorial, I lowered the Square level from the horizon level to created a place that also can be shared for those victims that are buried in the land of America and that no one has recognized. In the site plan and section, a projection line is showed to create a museum of American slavery, which also can be buried with not natural light.
The White Day is a memorial to the victims of slavery, a place to give thanks for their work and a place to meditate about our lives. It can be a place to ask for forgiveness, for those innocent children, women and men who suffered all kind of sufferings and were forgotten. I want to see to the future and see that there is hope in the world, in this land, where there will not be hatred, just love.