Louisville, Kentucky

“While Black History Month is a critically important component of our cultural learning, Black History is American history and should be acknowledged every month,” said Rebecca Fleischaker, executive director of Louisville Downtown Partnership. “By infusing technology with public art and public history, this installation project recognizes the wounds and history, providing a unique forum for education, discussion and healing.”

“Black Americans are on every page of our nation's history, but in most cases, we're written in invisible ink,” said Metro Councilman Jecorey Arthur, District 4. “Our city, commonwealth, and country were built with our blood, sweat, and tears. This project will honor those contributions while offering hope to everyone continuing the fight.”

“This project adds a new dimension to learning about Black History,” said Marilyn Jackson, president and CEO of the Muhammad Ali Center. “The AR experience provides an immersive and sensory snapshot of the past that you experience in the present. At the entrance of the Ali Center storefront, visitors will witness an ancestor spirit angel rising from the water to the soundscape of a motherless child. The emotional impact is something that cannot be replicated by reading textbooks. We are proud to be a part of the I Was Here project.”

“We were bulldozers for bulldozers, jackhammers before jackhammers, and Engineers before engineering degrees,” said Roots 101 founder and owner Lamont Collins. “We built the place we call America.”

Alongside the I Was Here project, the Frazier History Museum has introduced its new exhibit, The Journey, stories of the Underground Railroad and the hidden stories of people and places in our community with close ties. These two exhibits together demonstrate a fuller “journey”. Visit https://www.fraziermuseum.org/the-journey for more information.

The “here” of I Was Here begins with an honest look at the history of place and creates a monument to a people. The project creates a visual for an invisible history - asking us to examine who we are to each other, who we are as a nation, and how we can work to heal the wound in our citizenship created by enslavement.

What I Was Here accomplishes with its public art and public history installations is a mindful, reverent, and powerful acknowledgment of American history; history that may be misunderstood, misinterpreted, ignored, and forgotten. The project invites as much as it prods visitors to allow this acknowledgment to hold public space and to accept the echoes layered into the project’s name, I Was Here.

Download out app below to get access to the Augmented Reality experience.