Monumental Reckoning

What we can learn from 350 African slaves encircling Francis Scott Key.

By Peak Design

June 19^th, 2022

In the Spring of 1619 the San Juan Bautista, a Spanish slave ship, left Luanda, Angola bound for the shores of America. Aboard that ship were approximately 350 kidnapped Africans.

Many of these Africans perished during the journey. The ship was intercepted by an English privateer who captured the people and supplies on board and redirected them to the fledging colony of Virginia. In August of 1619, the surviving Africans on that ship became the first known African slaves in present-day America. Over the next 250 years, 10 million Africans lived and died enslaved in America.

Today is Juneteenth, an American holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. For those of us who grew up here, Juneteenth is a reminder that being a proud American means acknowledging and understanding our country’s checkered history. It means examining the American mythologies that persist in our textbooks and town squares, and putting them into historical context.

This is the purpose of Monumental Reckoning, a sculpture in Golden Gate park that was unveiled on Juneteenth, 2021. The sculpture is the work of San Francisco artist Dana King, and consists of 350 bronze figures—symbolizing the enslaved Africans aboard the San Juan Bautista—encircling an ornate 19th century monument of Francis Scott Key, a historical figure best known for writing the American National Anthem.

A year before its unveiling, on Juneteenth 2020, the Francis Scott Key statue was defaced and toppled by protestors in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. At that time, protests were gathering across America calling for the removal of monuments to white supremacy. For a lot of Americans, it was our first time learning about the lives and actions of many of our historical figures, beyond their historically celebrated legacies. It was our first time reckoning with the context in which these grand monuments were erected a century ago in our city parks.

Like many of America’s founding fathers, Francis Scott Key was a slave owner. He spoke of Black slaves as "a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community." He was a staunch anti-abolitionist, and in his role as District Attorney for the City of Washington he defended slavery and attacked abolitionists. He lobbied president Andrew Jackson to appoint his brother-in-law, Roger B. Taney, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Taney would go on to become the Chief Justice who wrote the Dred Scott Decision, which held that Black Americans, free or enslaved, were never intended to be citizens under the U.S. Constitution and the rights and privileges guaranteed to Americans could not be conferred upon Black Americans.

When Francis Scott Key penned the poem that would later become the American National Anthem, he actually wrote 4 verses (presently we only sing the first). In the 3rd verse, Key wrote:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave

This statement is widely interpreted to be a white supremacist threat to enslaved African Americans who dared to fight for their freedom—that they should be hunted down and killed.

Sculptor Dana King used to believe, quite adamantly, that monuments like the Francis Scott Key statue in Golden Gate Park should be destroyed. "Please, let me drive the wrecking ball," she said in an interview about Monumental Reckoning. "I wanted to be the first in line to tear them down. But now I see how important it is that they stay up."

What King came to realize is that the history of our country—the people we celebrate, the mythology and lore we recite—must be told in context. Monumental Reckoning is that context. Francis Scott Key wrote the rallying song of a nation whose wealth and success was built on the back of African American slaves. Key spent his career defending the institution of slavery, from which his wealth and legacy arose.

At Peak Design, we believe that to have pride in our country we must acknowledge the brutal history of African American slavery from which our country’s success was built. We believe that monuments like the Francis Scott Key statue shouldn’t be destroyed and forgotten, but rather understood for their full historical significance.

On Juneteenth 2022, we celebrate the abolition of slavery, and we acknowledge that its legacy still institutionally persists. We are proud to be Americans, and we acknowledge immense inequities and injustices in America. We have much to appreciate, and much to reckon with.