The Freedman’s Memorial Cemetery is empty on a sweltering weekday in June, the gated park tucked between Lemmon Avenue and Calvary Street contained by the three-lane frontage road that edges the moat of the North Central Expressway. The sound of traffic dominates the space—a dull, uneasy roar, the sound of an industrial fan, an airplane landing.
An arresting, life-size bronze sculpture of an African woman—the Prophetess, the keeper of memory—stands at the entrance. She holds a harp in her
