Sculptor Melvin Edwards, whose innovative abstraction evoked both the sculptural canon and the haunting afterlives of Atlantic slavery, died on Monday, March 30, at the age of 88. The news of his death was confirmed by his gallery, Alexander Gray Associates. Edwards was born in 1937 and raised in segregated Houston, Texas, and integrated Dayton, Ohio. The family was not especially religious — “you could say God is important, but you had to be rational about it,” Edwards said . But they were political — his father was the first senior Black official of the Boy Scouts of America and co-founded a Black political organization — and believed in the transformational power of education.  At an integrated school in Dayton, Edwards was profoundly influenced by his art teacher, Mrs. Bang, who taught him figure drawing, and visited his first museum, the Dayton Art Institute.…