Washington, D.C.’s longtime congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said she wants to have a statue of former President Abraham Lincoln removed from a prominent district park.
Norton said Tuesday she wants the Emancipation Memorial, first erected in 1876, taken down from Lincoln Park. She said that because the statue is on National Parks Service land, she would first work with the agency to see if it can be taken away to a museum without congressional action. She took umbrage with the monument’s “problematic depiction of the fight to achieve emancipation.”
“Although formerly enslaved Americans paid for this statue to be built in 1876, the design and sculpting process was done without their input, and it shows. The statue fails to note in any way how enslaved African Americans pushed for their own emancipation,” Norton said in a statement.
“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 this statue, Frederick Douglass also expressed his displeasure with the statue,” she added.
The designers of the Emancipation Statue in Lincoln Park in DC didn’t take into account the views of African Americans. It shows. Blacks too fought to end enslavement. That’s why I’m introducing a bill to move this statue to a museum. pic.twitter.com/A0MOnISH1N
— Eleanor Holmes Norton (@EleanorNorton) June 23, 2020
A group called The Freedom Neighborhood also organized a Tuesday protest to call for the statue’s removal. The group encouraged people to gather at 7 p.m. in Lincoln Park.
“To achieve true justice, we are not working with the police, nor will we seek any relationship with them,” the group said in an Instagram post. “In order to create change, we will do so by any means necessary. If you want a revolution, it won’t happen by being peaceful.”
The move comes after the district has been swept with a renewed wave of protests. Police clashed with demonstrators near the White House on Monday after they attempted to topple a statue of former President Andrew Jackson.
On Friday, a monument to Confederate Gen. Albert Pike was torn down by demonstrators in the district and lit on fire. Police watched as protesters tore the statue of the Confederate figure down.
