Jeez! You people! Bowling pins are not flat on top. ANYONE can see they are giant bud vases... ...aren't they...? Seriously, abstract art usually doesn't cut it for public monuments. The paddles may signify something in Africa, but how many people know that? How many Blacks even knew that? They don't live in Africa; they're Americans. So they, like the White people driving past tell visitors, "Oh, that's the 1898 Memorial," and the conversation usually turns to "I have no idea what those things are supposed to represent" right after being asked, "What are those giant bowling pins?" Now, contrast the Confederate Soldier Monument on Third Street. You can be two-hundred yards away and know that it has to do something with honoring a military man. I believe that a traditional bronze monument showing Blacks rebuilding Wilmington, or something along the nature of a Phoenix rising from the ashes would have had far more eye appeal and conveyed the message far better, even to people driving past at forty-five. Perhaps six giant, long-stem red roses welded to the tops could at least improve the eye appeal. They couldn't possibly make the meaning any more vague.