“If I can help somebody along the way, then my living shall not be in vain.”
That was the mantra of Lenwood Sloan, the 77-year-old Pennsylvania titan who dedicated his life toward the preservation of Black art, history and culture.
Sloan died over the Christmas holiday. He was 77.
Sloan was best-known for his work on the “Look Up, Look Out” campaign honoring Harrisburg’s Old 8th Ward, a multicultural neighborhood demolished by the state in the 1910s to expand Capitol Park in the state Capitol Complex.
The project was memorialized at 12 different sites across the Capitol Complex in 2020.
Sloan unexpectedly died after becoming violently ill at a party Christmas Eve, his family told PennLive Saturday.
“He leaves behind a legacy of excellence,” Joann Haynes, one of Sloan’s five siblings, told PennLive.
Bev Smith, Sloan’s older sister by five years, told PennLive Sloan was a “very special, God-touched child”. Everything he touched worked, she said.
The arts called to Sloan from a young age. He enjoyed dance, opera and theatre, she said. And as he grew older, he took to preserving those important markers of a people.
Sloan was the executive director of the Commonwealth Monument Project, which included the “Look Up, Look Out” campaign. There, he was known as a “catalytic agent, animator and facilitator of cultural and heritage programs” across the nation, according to the Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation.
Everyone who spoke of Sloan in the wake of his death knew him as a heart of gold.
Sloan used to text a religious devotional to his family group chat every morning. When he didn’t text Christmas morning, something wasn’t right, Haynes said. So she called a friend of Sloan on Christmas evening to check on him.
Sloan went to New York City to see the holiday lights, but became sick on Christmas Eve, the friend told her.
He remained bedridden for a day and some hours after that, according to Haynes.
On Friday morning, a second friend called Haynes and informed her Sloan had died at 7:30 in the morning.
“Did he have a stomach virus? Did he have a blood clot? Did he, did he?” Haynes asked. She said they’ll never know because the coroner did not order an autopsy and released Sloan’s body to a funeral home in New York for cremation.
The loss is especially devastating for the family because their mother passed in September. Sloan was the rock that grounded his family through the grief of her death. He was present, Haynes said — Sloan never had children himself, but attended every graduation for each of his nieces and nephews.
Sloan’s siblings remember him as a gentle giant, a humble and compassionate man.
“God could have taken any one of us in his place. He had so much purpose — he was committed to what he believed in,” Haynes said.
“He couldn’t pass by a man on the street with a cup without putting something in it,” Smith said.
“He was loving, creative, giving, and just, adjectives I can’t think of just to heap over his body,” Smith said. “What do we do without Lenwood?”
Calobe Jackson worked with Sloan on the Commonwealth Monument Project and described him as an outstanding personality who could organize people to get projects done.
“A lot of people could do the research, but he always ended up with a finished product that stands the years,” Jackson said.
Gov. Tom Wolf appointed Sloan to the Commonwealth Capitol Preservation Committee. Sloan was also a member of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Pennsylvania Downtown Association, the Lancaster Heritage Society, the Lancaster Public Arts Program, the Harrisburg Sprocket Mural Project and co-convenor and moderator of Lancaster: Arts Talk!
He briefly served a stint as the Harrisburg Director of Arts, Culture and Tourism. For years, he oversaw the Harrisburg Kipona Festival.
Sloan also led a tribute to the 1865 “Grand Review” parade in Harrisburg that celebrated colored troops of the American Civil War who were previously excluded from being celebrated in Washington, D.C. after the end of the war.
Sloan additionally helped found the African American Irish Diaspora Network. The organization, dedicated to telling the shared history between the two groups that Sloan helped found, shared its condolences.
“He was a humanitarian, a convenor and brilliant light of peace, equality and unity — a catalytic agent as he described himself,” it said on Facebook.
Ellen Brown, active in nonprofit fundraising in Harrisburg, said Sloan was the “quintessential gentleman”.
“He just never stopped,” Brown said. “His quest for sharing stories and lifelong learning were unmatched. He was so driven to preserve African American history and make sure it was told properly.”
Phyllis Bennett grew up with him in Pittsburgh, and stayed in touch with him all his life. She worked with him on the Commonwealth Memorial Project.
“Lenwood was a brilliant man. He had an unusual gift — speaking, bringing people together. He was a visionary like no other visionary. But most of all, he was a kind man,” Bennett said. “He was a wonderful human being after God’s own heart.”
Sloan shared his personal story with The Burg following the Black Lives Matter protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.
Sloan described himself as the “foster child” of Harrisburg after fleeing New Orleans in 2005 during the Hurricane Katrina. In June 2020, he admitted he still never felt as though he was “from here.” He lamented the loss of Black cultural and artistic institutions in Harrisburg.
“I continue to wonder as I wander, where do Black people exist on the landscape of Harrisburg’s memory? Where are the safehouses of our cultural experiences? Who’s recording what it is to be Black in Harrisburg for present children and future generations? Who’s building monuments to our achievements?”
“… Today and every day, we should work hard to pay it forward so that we have something to look forward to with hope and something to look backwards on with pride.”