William “Billy” Johnson Jr. pointed to a black-and-white photograph of a Black child, about five or six, hands in his pockets.
“That’s my grandfather,” Johnson said of the boy, who stood beside nine other children around a water pump in Ferry Street Village, a mostly-Black settlement just outside Eugene’s city limits in what is now known as Alton Baker Park.
The photograph, according to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, was dated 1949, the same year Lane County Commissioners ordered the settlement to be razed and its residents removed in order to build an upgraded Ferry Street Bridge.
The monument, sculpted by Percy Appau, a Black artist and designer in Eugene, depicts an Across the Bridge family: A man, a woman and three children. Aside from the sleeping baby, each person has their head held high. They wear suits and dresses and jewelry, and their natural hair is on proud display. None of them are a specific person, yet they represent every family that lived in the community, including Johnson’s…