Freedmen’s Memorial in Lincoln Park, Washington DC by Ryan Dlugash licensed under Creative Commons.

In June, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton released a statement saying that she will introduce legislation to remove the Emancipation Statue — also known as Freedmen’s Memorial — from Lincoln Park in Northeast, calling it a “problematic depiction of the fight to achieve emancipation.”

The statue, which depicts President Abraham Lincoln towering over a formerly enslaved Black man, “fails to note in any way how enslaved African Americans pushed for their own emancipation,” Norton said. The memorial, which was designed by a white man named Thomas Ball, was dedicated on April 14, 1876—the 11th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination.

In a Change.org petition with nearly 10,000 signatures, DC Council At-Large candidate Marcus Goodwin writes that this monument “perpetuates the idea that we are beneath white people and should simply be grateful for the scraps that have been thrown our way.”

Norton’s current plan is to relocate the statue to a museum. As residents of Lincoln Park (where I reside) and other interested parties await the statue’s fate, they’ve suggested ways to memorialize both Lincoln and the Emancipation — separately — making it possible to honor the original intent of the statue in Lincoln Park without diminishing the role that Black people played in their own emancipation by overstating Lincoln’s.

The statue originally had a different design

The original plan for the statue was to use a design by a sculptor named Harriet Hosmer that featured a martyred Lincoln lying down on his casket, surrounded on the corners by a Black man for sale, another working in the field, a third serving as a spy for Union troops and a Black Union soldier. The latter figure, standing with eyes gazing forward in uniform and holding a gun, would be shown having gained freedom, legitimacy and power.

The Redesigned Freedmen’s Memorial by Hosmer by Harriet Hosmer.

Input from the white leaders of the Western Sanitary Commission led to a modified design that had Lincoln standing and the Black men moved farther away, swapping places with the female figures of Liberty. This was because they wanted to highlight Lincoln’s role in saving the Union over his role as the emancipator to make it a “national” monument. They believed that a monument about emancipation could not be national, as it would only be relevant to Black people.

In the end, the Hosmer design was deemed too expensive, and William Greenleaf Eliot, founder of Washington University in St. Louis, chose a design by Thomas Ball after seeing an earlier version of it on a trip to Italy. In contrast to the previous design that featured Black men standing and Lincoln lying down, this shows the former president standing and one Black man, shirtless and kneeling before him.

In defense —and opposition — of the statue

Defenders of the statue point out that the crouching enslaved person was a common image used in abolitionist papers, other proposed statues and medallions, often with the phrase “Am I not a Man?” and so there was no intention to diminish Black people.

However, art historian Kirk Savage has argued in Race and the Production of Modern American Nationalism as well as his book Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves, that the image was one meant for white people. It was propaganda designed to create pity, and thus, political action among them. So it was, in some ways, meant to diminish enslaved people. Therefore, while it might be fit for a statement on abolition or slavery, it is not representative of emancipation or equality.

Another defense of the statue is that it was paid for by former enslaved people and thus we run the risk of insulting them if we remove it. It is true that the statue was almost entirely paid for by former enslaved people, but they had virtually no voice in what it would look like. Plus, most of the money was raised before the current design was even chosen.

Along these lines, defenders say the model for the freed man was a real former enslaved person named Archer Alexander. However, in his book Emancipation and the Freed in American Sculpture, Henry Morris Murray points out that Alexander wasn’t freed by Lincoln and that he was only the model for the face and Ball used his own body to model the rest of the figure.

A final defense is that Frederick Douglass himself dedicated the statue. This is true, though in a recently discovered letter he showed ambivalence about it, praising the work of Ball as admirable, but also writing that “the negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude. What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man.”

Further, as Savage points out in his book, Douglass saw the statue as a political statement of gratitude that could serve as a defense when others try to “scourge” freed Black people as not thankful enough.

Ways to honor both the freed Black people and Emancipation

On a Lincoln Park neighborhood listserv, people suggested several replacement ideas. One was to commission a new statue of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass as equals, perhaps a representation of the first time the two met at the White House.

Another was to move the current statue of Lincoln in front of the old city hall (the first memorial commissioned after his death) to Lincoln Park.

A third suggestion was to recast the Pietro Mezzara statue of Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation. The original was made of plaster. After some time, Lincoln’s outstretched arm fell off and then a bronze recasting was destroyed in the San Francisco fire of 1906. Thus instead of “removing history” we would be restoring it.

Abraham Lincoln statue, sculpted by Pietro Mezzara, before it was destroyed by fire. by unknown.

A final suggestion builds on the Hosmer design. It’s a memorial showing the emancipation process in four stages, with groupings at each corner of the plaza: first, those who successfully sued and petitioned to end slavery represented by people like Quock Walker and Elizabeth Freeman; then those who led the cause of self-emancipation like Harriet Tubman and other leaders of the Underground Railroad; then, Black Union soldiers and spies who fought for their freedom; and finally, those like Lincoln, Thadeus Stevens and Frederick Douglass who passed the laws and amendments that “finally” ended slavery in the United States. (Even after ratification of the 15th Amendment, slavery existed for a few more years in places controlled by Native Americans and wasn’t completely ended in the US until it was outlawed in Guam in 1900).

No matter what option is chosen, the debate over this statue ultimately creates an opportunity for a win-win and for us to fix the problems that have long been evident in the current memorial, we just need to seize it.