NC Freedom Park opens this week in downtown Raleigh. Here’s how to go.
Years in the making, the North Carolina Freedom Park will open on Wednesday in downtown Raleigh, honoring the African American struggle for freedom.
At the center is a public art piece called the Beacon of Freedom, which will be lit at night. Quotations about freedom line the park’s pathways.
The park was designed by the late architect Phil Freelon and his firm, Perkins + Will, which also designed the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. It was funded with both private and public money, including from the state budget and city of Raleigh.
It is the first park of its kind and expected to draw visitors from across the state and beyond to the block between the Legislative Building and Executive Mansion. It sits on the corner of Wilmington and Lane streets next to the State Archives and Records buildings.
Park board members and historians don’t consider the steel, 50-foot-tall Beacon of Freedom a monument in the traditional sense. That’s part of what makes it significant, historian Reginald Hildebrand told The News & Observer in 2022.
“This isn’t exclusively a celebration of Black history, although it is that. But it is making a statement about what Black people have to say, to the region and to the world about freedom that is distinctive, and of urgency because of their particular perspective,” said Hildebrand, a park board member and retired UNC-Chapel Hill history professor.
There are 20 quotations inscribed in the walls along pathways in the park, including enslaved people, bank presidents, poets, politicians, soldiers and editors. Their quotations are all about freedom, Hildebrand said: “the meaning of freedom, the struggle for freedom, what it means to be denied freedom — and that conversation through different time periods and different generations.”
History of the site
The park has been under construction for three years and planned for several years before that. A groundbreaking was held in October 2020 during the pandemic, with Freelon’s family members, Gov. Roy Cooper and board members.
The land itself was most recently a surface gravel parking lot, with several trees nearby, most of which are still there. The North Carolina Crime Victims Memorial Garden remains adjacent to Freedom Park.
The land’s history is also part of African Americans’ struggle for freedom in North Carolina, as state archaeologists’ research of what was underground revealed.
They found part of a stone foundation wall from an 1850 house owned by Thomas Devereux Hogg, a businessman who enslaved 18 people in Raleigh, according to the 1850 census. The stone was covered with layers of clay, dirt, gravel and the former parking lot. The Hogg family bought the block in 1831 for $400, and the since-demolished house was built by enslaved people.
The first visitors as the park neared completion were Wake County public high school students, who came to the park in March 2023 while it was under construction.
Torry Holt of Holt Brothers Construction, which built the park, urged the students to return once it is finished.
“We’re doing something special,” Holt said.
How to go to the Freedom Park opening
▪ The opening celebration will begin with a 10 a.m. ribbon cutting on Wednesday, Aug. 23 in the park. Dignitaries and officials from the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the N.C. African American Heritage Commission and the N.C. Freedom Park Board of Directors are expected.
▪ The park is located at 218 N. Wilmington St. in Raleigh.
▪ It is open to the public.
▪ Parking is available on the street (metered) and in the surface parking lot (hourly) on Jones Street across from the State Archives building.
▪ After the opening ceremony, there will be live music performances and refreshments until 2 p.m.
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