The monument in Washington fuses the portrait of a real-life individual with a common symbol that had galvanized abolitionists for almost 100 years: a generic image of a kneeling enslaved person.

During the Breonna Taylor protests on May 31, 2020, a man was kneeling with his hands in the air when then LMPD Officer Cory Evans hit him in the back of the head with a riot stick. The U.S.