Towards Freedom

by

History

Like many Southern cities, Lexington has removed century-old Confederate monuments from its public spaces in recent years. Bronze statues of Generals John Hunt Morgan and John C. Breckinridge were relocated in 2017 from the old courthouse square to Lexington Cemetery, where both men are buried. But last month, a new bronze statue was erected to honor two Lexington heroes from the other side of America’s fight over slavery. Their lives were amazing, and the grassroots effort to honor them is a good story, too.

Nearly 500 people crowded Lexington Traditional Magnet School’s lawn at the corner of North Limestone and Fourth streets on June 19 as a larger-than-life statue of Lewis and Harriet Hayden was unveiled. The couple escaped slavery in Lexington in 1844 and resettled in Boston, where they became influential leaders in the Underground Railroad and abolitionist movement. The statue, by acclaimed Jamaican sculptor Basil Watson and titled “Towards Freedom,” depicts the Haydens striding north together, arms raised and hands clasped.

“It’s fitting that we’re unveiling this statue on Juneteenth, a day when we stand united in acknowledging our past and our nation’s greatest injustice,” Gov. Andy Beshear told the crowd. “We stand here with a recognition that there is still more progress to be made.”

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Lewis Hayden was born in in 1814 in the block across North Limestone from the statue. He was enslaved to Presbyterian minister Adam Rankin. At 10, he was traded to a cabinetmaker for a pair of horses, then had a series of masters. Hayden married an enslaved woman named Esther, and they had a son. But in a widely published letter in 1847, he wrote that statesman Henry Clay sold his wife and child, and he never saw them again. (Clay denied that.) Hayden later married Harriet Bell, who—with her son, Joseph—was enslaved to the owner of a Lexington hat factory.

In 1844, Lewis Hayden was owned by two businessmen who rented him out to the Phoenix Hotel, where he was a waiter. He met two abolitionists: Methodist minister Calvin Fairbank, a native of western New York, and Delia Webster, a schoolteacher from Vermont. On an October evening, Fairbank and Webster rented a carriage and spirited Lewis, Harriet and Joseph out of town. The Underground Railroad smuggled the Haydens to Canada, but they soon moved to Boston to join the fight against slavery. Lewis Hayden became a prominent speaker and activist. The Haydens used their home as a boardinghouse for escaped slaves, and Lewis let it be known that the cellar was packed with gunpowder in case any slavecatchers tried to storm the place.

Fairbank and Webster were less fortunate. They returned to Lexington, where they were arrested and sent to prison. Gov. William Owsley pardoned Webster two months into her two-year sentence. Fairbank served five years at hard labor until Hayden won his release by raising $650 to compensate his former enslavers.

Hayden, who ran a Boston clothing store to support his activism, became more radical after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which required people in free states to help return runaways. He helped organize a mob that sprung a captured runaway from a Boston jail, and he worked with abolitionist John Brown to raise money for his unsuccessful raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

During the Civil War, Hayden convinced Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew to persuade President Abraham Lincoln to allow Black men to fight in the Union Army. Hayden was instrumental in organizing the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, whose story was told in the Oscar-winning 1989 movie Glory. 

Hayden later served in the Massachusetts legislature. When he died in 1889, the New York Age newspaper described Hayden as “easily the most prominent colored man in New England.”

Harriet Hayden became as well-known as her husband. After the Civil War, she was active in the temperance and women’s suffrage movements, and she organized Black Bostonians’ celebration of the nation’s centennial in 1876. When she died in 1893, she left Harvard University $5,000 to create scholarships for Black medical students. 

The Haydens were largely forgotten in Lexington until two books were published in the late 1990s: Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad by Randolph Runyon (1996) and Lewis Hayden and the War Against Slavery by Joel Strangis (1999). The Haydens were just two of many examples of Black people in Kentucky who accomplished great things despite oppression before civil rights laws were passed in the 1960s. 

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Researching and telling those stories has become a second career for Yvonne Giles, a retired home extension agent. Over the past 25 years, Giles has become the go-to expert on Black history in Lexington. So, it was natural that Sherry Maddock, a white East End resident, would seek Giles’ advice in 2016 when she decided the neighborhood needed to commemorate its rich Black history. Giles suggested three possibilities, but it was the Haydens’ story that captured Maddock’s imagination. 

“The story of Lewis and Harriet Hayden is a perfect example of enslaved people, their aspirations, their ambition and their courage,” Giles said. “Telling their joint story was very important. Harriet was as strong if not stronger than Lewis.”

Maddock’s vision for the monument quickly attracted support, but the effort stalled after she and her family moved to her husband’s native Australia.

Things got going again after the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to Giles and a group of North Limestone neighbors and interested citizens led by Larry Kezele, who for 45 years has lived in a circa 1860 house across from the statue. “It was just such a compelling story,” said neighbor Linda Carroll, who with her husband, John Morgan, restored and live in the Rankin house, where Hayden was born.

The group formed a nonprofit organization, Lexington Freedom Train (lexfreedomtrain.org), and raised $450,000 for the statue, including the largest-ever grant of $245,000 from the city’s Public Art Commission. The statue and its future maintenance are paid for, and the group is working to raise another $275,000 to combine with $150,000 it has in the bank to build an informational garden around the statue ($300,000) and fund educational curricula and programming ($125,000).

Watson, the sculptor who now works from suburban Atlanta, said one of his goals was to emphasize that the Haydens were equal partners. “The movement toward freedom or progress is always teamwork,” he said. “They say if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”

Frank X Walker, a former Kentucky poet laureate, said being a member of the Freedom Train committee inspired him to write a poem about Lewis Hayden in his latest book, Load in Nine Times. The poem’s title comes from what Fairbank wrote that Hayden told him when he asked why he wanted his help to escape slavery: “Because I am a man.”

It was great to have the governor, the mayor, City Council members and hundreds of people turn out for the statue’s dedication, Kezele said. But what has been more gratifying has been to look out his windows and see Black families stop, admire the statue and take joyful photos of themselves mimicking Lewis and Harriet Hayden, arms raised and hands clasped. “It opens up conversations for the people of the East End,” Kezele said. “So many stories have yet to be told.”