Baylor University has released the first detailed renderings of an addition to its Founders Mall that will be called “Monument to the Unknown Enslaved.”
The monument is a priority project of the Baptist school’s Commission on Historic Campus Representations, which last year issued a report with recommendations for how better to tell university history, including some early leaders’ slaveholding past.
A university news release said the new monument’s design is “inspired by” the limestone used on the original Baylor campus in Independence, Texas. That first campus most likely was built, at least in part, by enslaved people.
Baylor was founded in 1845 in Independence, which is located about 100 miles south of Waco, the school’s home since 1886. Independence is about equidistant between Waco and Houston.
Limestone, which formed the basis of the original school’s architecture, will be a central feature of the new monument, beginning with a limestone wall that will form an outer ring with a “storytelling canvas” on both sides.
“The wall will be stacked stones with intentional voids between — representing both the unknown enslaved and gaps in Baylor’s history — and will include a cascading water feature. When activated, the waterwall will represent a time of stirring engagement; when off, a time of reflection,” the news release said.
A smaller inner ring will include a ground-level map of East Central Texas and will depict the enslaved population density of the region around 1860.
A third component of the monument will be an amphitheater-style Resonance Garden that “will allow students and other visitors to reflect on the information presented in other areas of the monument through engravings and QR codes. It will also be suitable for small, respectful gatherings,” school officials said.
Founders Mall connects Pat Neff Hall, the university’s historic administration building, with Waco Hall, one of the major auditoriums and theaters on campus. The new monument has been designed by the architectural firm Sasaki with input from a Campus Experience Project Team and student representatives.
In addition to the monument, the school plans to add life-sized bronze statues of the late Robert Gilbert and Barbara Walker, the university’s first Black graduates in 1967. Those works of art will be created by Benjamin Victor, the only living artist to have three works in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. The statues will be unveiled April 4 at their new location in front of Tidwell Bible Building.
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