This sculpture, depicting a woman cradling an infant in her arms and leaning away from grasping hands and flames at the base, was created in response to the vicious lynching of a young woman named Mary Turner in 1918. Mary Turner's husband had been lynched and she publicly denounced his murder. In response, a mob of hundreds captured her, hung her upside down from a tree, and brutally killed her and her unborn child.
Artist Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller's sculpture is one of the first created by an African American specifically depicting the brutality of lynch mobs.