While the official name of this monument is the Texas African American History Memorial, it is popularly known as the Juneteenth Monument. Texas’s capitol has at least eight memorials to the Confederacy but up until 2016 there was nothing on the grounds dedicated to the one-in-seven Texans who are Black. At that time, Juneteenth, which started in Texas was on its way to becoming a National Holiday and the state, at the urging of the Black community, decided to honor the day and the people who celebrated it at the end of the Civil War.
The sculptor, Ed Dwight, has his name inscribed on the monument, along with the year it was completed “16.” Dwight was commissioned as an Air Force officer during the 1950s and in 1961 he was accepted into the training program from which the first astronauts were to be chosen. He was controversially not selected to go into space. In 2024, was launched into space on the Blue Origin NS-25 mission, becoming the oldest person sent into space. Later, after resigning from the Air Force, Dwight worked as an engineer and began sculpting. In 1974, Dwight started using scrap metal to create works on Black History. He has created 132 historical pieces over the last fifty years, many of them for National Parks.
