DC Democrat introduces legislation to remove ‘Emancipation Memorial’

Located in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill, the Emancipation Memorial, which is also referred to as ‘Freedman’s Memorial,’ features President Abraham Lincoln with liberated slave kneeling at his feet as he holds up the Emancipation Proclamation.

The statue dedicated in 1876 and unveiled on the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln’s death, was funded by former slaves.

“Although formerly enslaved Americans paid for this statue, the design and sculpting process was done without their input or participation in any way, and it shows,” said the representative in a press release.

“The statue fails to note how enslaved African Americans pressed for their own emancipation. Understandably, they were only recently liberated from slavery and were grateful for any recognition of their freedom. However, in his keynote address at the unveiling of the statue, Frederick Douglass pointedly did not praise the statue, and, indeed, in private remarks, went as far as to say, ‘it showed the negro on his knee when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom.'”

Representative Holmes Norton introduced the same legislation last year when woke mobs began to topple historical statues as racially charged protests swept across the country.

The City of Boston removed a copy of the statue last year during the country’s civil unrest.

Although Republican President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which ultimately freed the slaves, the statue is seen as controversial for reasons which include the exclusion of President U.S. Grant who granted citizenship to Black people.

Famed abolitionist Fredrick Douglass was among those who critiqued the statue, however he never requested for it to be removed.

Instead, Fredrick Douglass requested a new statue be erected in addition to the memorial, stating that Lincoln “was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.”

“The mere act of breaking the Negro’s chains was the act of Abraham Lincoln, and it is beautifully expressed in this monument. But the act by which the Negro was made a citizen of the United States and invested with the elective franchise was pre-eminently the act of President U.S. Grant, and this is nowhere seen in the Lincoln monument,” said Douglass in a letter to the editor of the National Republican newspaper.

After activists vowed to topple historical statue's and memorial's in the name of justice during last year’s civil unrest, the National Guard was deployed to prevent that from happening.