A long-planned memorial to black Revolutionary War soldiers is getting a renewed push from the U.S. Senate after fading into obscurity and losing its coveted site on the National Mall.
The National Mall Liberty Memorial Fund D.C., the newest incarnation of the now-defunct Black Revolutionary War Patriots Foundation, forfeited its lock on the Mall site last October, some 20 years after the location on Constitution Lake was first approved by Congress.
But Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., recently introduced legislation to resurrect the project “to honor slaves and other persons that fought … during the American Revolution,” according to the bill.
“Years ago people would ask ‘Why a memorial to black people?’ ” said Maurice Barboza, founder of the Liberty Fund. “But it’s not a memorial to black people. It’s a memorial to what they did. They struggled for freedom and helped win the American Revolution.”
The estimated $10 million commemoration of the more than 5,000 black Revolutionary War soldiers was, and still is, planned for Constitution Gardens on the south side of the lake, between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.
Barboza and his aunt, Lena Santos Ferguson, the second black woman to join the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, launched the memorial effort in 1984. Both left the Patriots Foundation in 1992.
Barboza said the project “imploded” after he withdrew, and he’s since had to start from scratch. The Black Patriots, he said “is gone and everything with them is gone.” But he is “optimistic” that Congress will view the memorial property “asland that had already been set aside.”
