The Vote Road Trip: Days 6 and 7 Liverpool
Mary Bamber, A Revolutionary Woman
8/1 We are reveling in the fact that we are staying put for two nights. Liverpool is wonderful and interesting. We walked to the dock where there are wonderful views and excellent museums. The Museum of
Serendipitously we discovered another powerfully emotional exhibit in the museum, Double Fantasy: John and Yoko, a chronicle of their life together and quest for world peace. Next we went to the nearby Tate Liverpool to see the astonishing-in-its size exhibition of the pop art and graffiti-like work and activism of the artist Keith Haring.
Untitled by Keith Haring
8/2 We started the day at St. George’s Hall, a massive building with a magnificent, three-story high main room with an extraordinary tile and mosaic floor, and a grand organ. We went to the top balcony to view the awesome space. In 1908, the local Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage held a demonstration and set up speaking platforms for suffragists and suffragettes. Inside, in May 1909, Mary Phillips hid in the organ loft, stayed awake for 24 hours, then disrupted a ceremony, protesting the arrest of a local suffragette Patricia Woodlock.
St. George’s Hall and young Queen Victoria statue
The nearby Wellington Column was the site of many suffrage demonstrations.
Wellington’s Column
Freedom!
Walking back to the docks, we spent hours immersed in the building that housed two museums: the Merseyside Maritime Museum and the International Slavery Museum. Opened in 2007 to mark the bicentennial of the Slave Trade Act that abolished the slave trade in the British Empire, the Slavery Museum was fascinating and painful. The Freedom! sculpture took my breath away. It was created from recycled objects—metal car parts and raw junk— found in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, by young Haitians and sculptors Eugene, Céleur and Guyodo from Atis Rezistans, in collaboration with Mario Benjamin, an internationally renowned Haitian artist.
#HaitiBeatles #slavery #suffragettes #Titanic #KeithHaring #Liverpool