Akron Mayor Shammas Malik talked to Ray Horner on Thursday, about the new Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza and statue, as well as Akron’s new police chief, and this week’s big high school softball tournament at Firestone Stadium.

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Malik spoke at the dedication of the new plaza, and was on hand for the statue’s official unveiling, on Wednesday.

Famed abolitionist and women’s rights advocate, Sojourner Truth, is best known for her “Ain’t I A Woman” speech, which she delivered in Akron at a Women’s Rights rally, in 1851.

The new Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza, is located at the Summit Medina United Way building, at37 North High Street, in downtown Akron.

The statue was created by Akron-based artist Woodrow Nash.

Mayor Shammas Malik speaks to crowd just before Sojourner Truth statue is unveiled in downtown Akron.

Open to the public seven days a week from dawn to dusk, the Plaza was designed by landscape architect Dion Harris of Summit Metro Parks, with construction management done by The Ruhlin Company. At its center, the Plaza features a design inspired by an impala lily, the national flower of Ghana, Truth’s ancestral homeland. There, on a plinth of black granite, stands Nash’s life-sized bronze sculpture of Truth, surrounded by pillars representing the long-demolished Old Stone Church. A path winding through the Plaza displays important dates in Truth’s life, beginning with her birth as Isabella Baumfree in 1797, continuing through the day she left slavery in 1826 and her years as an activist and orator, before ending in 1883, when she passed away at age 86 in Battle Creek, Michigan.

The Plaza also features a mural by local artist Derin Fletcher, inspired by a famous 1864 photograph of Truth. Fletcher’s mural occupies the southeast wall of the Plaza, alongside a metal sculpture of an impala lily designed by another local artist, Alexandria Couch.