8/23/2023 0 Comments Freedom statue capitolSome defenders - Black and white - argue that tearing the memorial down would erase a meaningful tribute to emancipation, one that was largely paid for by free African Americans. She was among a group of Black historians who came to defend the statue. A demonstration last Friday turned into something of a public debate - over a complex legacy, the importance of imagery, and the relevance of decisions made more than 150 years ago.Ĭarolivia Herron, a writer and classics professor at Howard University, told DCist/WAMU on Friday that the statue is where she took her first steps 73 years ago. Over the past two weeks, protesters, neighbors, and law enforcement officers have crowded in the Capitol Hill park. In D.C., thousands of people have signed on and a youth-led organization, the Freedom Neighborhood, has pledged that it will come down "by any means necessary." Such conversations appear to have started last month with a petition seeking the monument's removal, following calls in Boston to remove a replica of the statue. bowed down to someone who has positioned himself to have a lot of authority." And if you're the person that granted me my freedom, I should be happy. "A free man should be standing eye to eye. "Does that man look free? He does not look free," Lee says. ![]() ![]() Looking at the Lincoln statue, known as the Emancipation Memorial or the Freedmen's Monument, Lee ponders the barely-clothed Black man at Lincoln's feet, who is looking not exactly heavenward, but perhaps somewhere far in the distance. "But I said, 'I need to go back and look at that again,' because of the climate and everything else that's going on." "I've been to this park before," says Lee, a lifelong D.C. Arnetta Lee, a Black woman in her 60s, walks up amid the joggers and squints to read the protest signs that adorn it.
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