Come to the table.
The work begins with gathering: learning the history, asking questions, and making room for difficult conversations.
Carey Fountain leading a community workshop.JEFFERSON COUNTY, ALABAMAART · REMEMBRANCE · COMMUNITY
A living act of remembrance
Memory is
a living thing.
We honor lives taken by racial terror through art, shared stories, and the things we grow together.
↓ Enter the storyFrom the BCTP archive
Lewis Houston memorial gathering · Linn Park
01 / A life, not only a loss
Before there was a memorial,
there was a person.
A note before you begin
This project addresses lynching and racial violence.
Explore at your own pace.
This project addresses lynching and racial violence.
Explore at your own pace.
The Black Cherry Tree Project brings artists and communities together to remember people whose lives were taken by racial terror in Jefferson County, Alabama. Historical research is a beginning—not an ending. Art opens space to reckon with that history, to listen, and to imagine how we care for one another now.
A name held in public memory
Lewis
Houston.
REMEMBERED · NOVEMBER 24, 1883
His name is carried in an artwork and a public memorial. The tree planted in his memory has since been removed; its history remains part of our record.
On October 6, 2024, BCTP gathered at Linn Park for its first commemorative tree planting. The gathering included poetry, drumming, a community mural, and the unveiling of Lewis Houston’s marker.
Read the project’s account ↗About the historical record
The marker gives November 24, 1883, as the date Lewis Houston was lynched. The commemorative planting took place in 2024. Historical events and present-day memorial locations should not be treated as interchangeable map points.
Explore JCMP’s historical research ↗02 / Artists bear witness
There is more than
one way to remember.
A wall of words. A body in motion. A voice in a room. Artists give memory a form we can encounter—and a question we can carry away.
Black Cherry Tree Project
Each work is an artist’s response.
Each remembered life has its own history.
Memory in movement & voice
Not everything
can be held
in a frame.
The 2023 cohort’s performances brought remembrance into a shared space through poetry, movement, music, and participatory art.
A BCTP community tree planting.
03 / Many hands. A shared remembrance.
Bound
together.
The Jefferson County Memorial Quilt Project · A 2025 partner collaboration
Bib & Tucker Sew-Op · Birmingham Civil Rights Institute · 2025
Carey Fountain leading a community workshop.Leave a piece
of yourself.
Individual quilt blocks become part of something larger. The finished work brings personal acts of making into a collective act of remembrance.
CREATE Birmingham coordinated the 2025 project with partner organizations and community members. BCTP contributed historical education and dialogue during workshops; Bib & Tucker Sew-Op led sewing instruction, drawing on research from the Jefferson County Memorial Project.
Visit the Hoover workshop post ↗Hold the history
together.
The partnership culminated in Bound Together: Threads of Remembrance at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in 2025, exhibiting the completed quilt alongside BCTP artworks. Read CREATE Birmingham’s project account ↗
Image: Bib & Tucker Sew-Op, shared by BCTP.Read the unveiling reflection ↗
Art in conversation with memory
Not simply
an exhibition.
A place to meet.
The screening room
Stay a while.
Listen closely.
Meet the people and ideas behind the work. Films play only when you choose; sound is never automatic.
04 / Remembrance takes root
What we remember,
we must also tend.
A tree needs care beyond the day it is planted. So does the work of memory. BCTP connects artistic remembrance with living memorials and the people who sustain them.
LEWIS HOUSTON MEMORIAL · LINN PARK · OCTOBER 6, 2024From the BCTP film archive · 48 seconds
A gathering.
A name.
A living commitment.
At the first planting, people came together through ancestral tribute, poetry, drumming, and a community mural before planting the sapling and unveiling the marker.
In 2024, BCTP planted 33 trees across our communities. Our living memorial map documents these planting locations, records changes in their condition, and invites the community to help care for them.
The Lewis Houston tree at Linn Park has been removed. Its planting and memorial history remain in the archive.
Explore the 33 tree locations →View the original gathering announcement ↗A growing body of work
One project.
Many ways of gathering.
2022
An inaugural exhibition
The first exhibition at Gallery VOX begins a shared artistic practice of remembrance.
↗2023Branches of Memory
A second cohort brings visual, performative, and literary works into the project.
↗2024Dialogue & living memorials
Creative Dialogues at the Ballard House and the first commemorative tree planting at Linn Park.
↗2025Bound Together
Community-made quilt blocks become a collective memorial, shown with BCTP artworks at BCRI.
↗The next chapter is made together
Help this work
keep growing.
Make space for an artist. Start a conversation.
Support the care that remembrance requires.