Couple who escaped slavery on Underground Railroad honored with Lexington monument
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- Lexington unveiled a monument honoring abolitionists Lewis and Harriet Hayden.
- The statue of the couple stands near Lexington Middle School and the Legacy Trail.
- Organizers highlighted the monument's role in preserving overlooked Black history.
There are many goosebump-inducing moments in Lewis Hayden’s life story, but one of them happened in 1825 when he was just 14 years old, his mother and siblings already sold away, his own life traded as chattel slavery for two horses.
The Revolutionary War hero, the Marquis de Lafayette was making his triumphal return to the United States, including Lexington. As he rode past, Hayden recounted, he locked eyes with Hayden and gave a little bow.
“At that moment, he knew he would be free,” said organizer Mark Steven Watkins at the Juneteenth dedication of a monument to Hayden and his wife, Harriet. “Lewis Hayden kept going toward freedom.”
“Towards Freedom,” the bronze statue of the Haydens by artist Basil Watson was unveiled Thursday to huge fanfare from a big crowd in Lexington’s East End, a monument to the Underground Railroad that helped the Haydens escape to Boston in 1844 to become prominent abolitionists who helped many more.
The statue of the couple, holding clasped hands up in both joy and determination, stands on the corner of North Limestone and Fourth Street is a monument to the Haydens and the many other enslaved people who found their way up Limestone to the Ohio River and freedom, said Larry Kezele, who has shepherded the project for a decade.
The statue honors the people “whose voices have waited two centuries to be heard,” Kezele said.
“Today those voices begin to speak.”
But the monument’s site on the campus of Lexington Middle School and along the Legacy Trail, organizers said, ensures it will be a living reminder of the progress still needed to overcome what Gov. Andy Beshear called “our nation’s greatest injustice,” the institution of slavery.
“We cannot ignore the mistakes of our past,” Beshear said at the dedication. “We cannot turn away from even the most painful moments and pretend they don’t exist. Instead we must learn from them and make progress for that better tomorrow.”
Beshear made some not-so-veiled digs at recent efforts to undo diversity efforts at the state and federal level.
“While our federal government tries to erase a lot of our history, today in Kentucky we’re celebrating it,” he said before being interrupted by cheers. “We are celebrating it and committing to preserving important people like Lewis and Harriet. We’re committed to celebrating these leaders and educators about the aspects of our history that for too long have been overlooked.”
The project has been more than a decade in the making, the brainchild of East End resident Sherry Maddock who had just read a biography of Hayden.
The Lexington Freedom Train group combined neighborhood residents like Kezele with historians like Yvonne Giles, who kept researching the Haydens’ life. LexArts did fundraising for the project, which will eventually become a mini-park on the corner. And the Lexington Public Arts Commission gave its largest donation ever, $245,000 to help the statue become real.
Kezele said the project is still fundraising to meet the total $854,000 cost.
The monument will become an integral part of Lexington Middle School, the former Lexington Traditional Magnet School. Four LMS students helped Watson, Beshear and Mayor Linda Gorton unveil the statue as a choir sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
“What an amazing gift for our scholars to learn about our nation and city’s history, and to be inspired to continue the Haydens’ march to freedom,” Principal Bryne Jacobs said. “Today was a special day.”
Civil rights activist Chester Grundy agreed.
“This community has come together not just to celebrate a work of art, but to elevate a principle, an ideal of democracy,” Grundy said.
For more information about the project and fundraising, or to donate, go to www.lexfreedomtrain.org.
This story was originally published June 19, 2025 at 2:40 PM.
