Artist Toni Scott’s installation The Measure of Things: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, memorializes Black lives lost unjustly and addresses systemic racism in the United States of America. This testament takes the form of a suspended canoe to hang measuring tapes, from each of which extends a chain and bell. Placed under each bell a charred black bark mound illustrates lives lost. The measurements of inequality are presented in the shape of a canoe and the chains of systemic racism are exposed, as bells ring the truth, and the fallen are memorialized.

The canoe-like shape is a symbolic representation of enslavement and freedom. A homage to the transportation used in the transatlantic slave trade, the aquatic vessel represents the enslavement of Africans and its ongoing legacy and those still bound to a system of inequality. The oppressed are still chained—from chattel slavery where chains were used to punish and constrain to all those who suffer. The elevation of materials with the black bark mounds on the ground symbolizes the Black and Brown people killed in police custody and the collective lives lost to racism, too many to count.

The artwork title and concept are inspired by Maya Angelou’s, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, whose book title was inspired by the third stanza of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “Sympathy.” Dunbar’s poem implies that although the caged bird may never have experienced freedom, he still sings of it because he was created for freedom.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, —
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

This installation provokes an important discussion and the immediate action needed to address racism in this country.

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!