In 2019, the City of Salem completed the transformation of a vacant lot along the South Harbor Trail into the Charlotte Forten Park. The park is situated just south of downtown Salem and directly across the South River channel from Peabody Street Park and the Point neighborhood. The park’s namesake, Charlotte Forten, was a poet, educator, abolitionist, and the first African American woman to graduate from Salem State University. Despite the park’s central location, the approximately 25,000-square-foot parcel remains underutilized. Building on extensive community engagement that City staff have led in collaboration with local partners, Salem is now poised to activate the space that bears Charlotte Forten’s name through the commissioning of a memorial dedicated to her life and legacy. 

Prior to the park’s development, the City of Salem’s Department of Planning and Community Development (DPCD) partnered with designer Claudia Paraschiv to host a series of participatory design workshops at the site of the future park. In 2019, following the park’s dedication, Salem-based organization the Creative Collective worked in partnership with the City of Salem and Salem State University to produce a launch event that included music, dance, and literary performances, historical reenactments, and an interactive public art piece; the event also launched a public fund to create a future permanent public art installation.

In 2020, the City applied for and received a grant from the New England Foundation for the Art. The Collective Imagination for Spatial Justice grant allowed City staff to pay three artists, designers, and curators—Mel Isidor, Keshia DeLeon, and Claudia Paraschiv—to develop and implement a creative community engagement strategy in partnership with a larger advisory group of community stakeholders. The team deployed a bilingual community survey, postcard campaign, and pop-up events located in the park to gather community feedback to inform the development of a modern memorial to Forten. In addition to generating vital community networks, these engagement activities surfaced and clarified community preferences for the future of the park and memorial. 

Now, three years since the dedication of Charlotte Forten Park, the City is poised to establish a flexible and inclusive public art commissioning process that will guide the development of a memorial to Forten. As Salem leads process to commission a memorial, MAPC will identify additional local and regional project partners to support the creation of a new commemorative piece, research potential funding sources, establish a public art process that can be adapted to guide the development of the Charlotte Forten memorial as well as future public art projects in the City, and develop a Call for Artists for the Charlotte Forten memorial.