Monuments and Historical Narratives: The Freedman’s Memorial | BRIdge from the Past
How can historical narratives help us understand statutes and memorials? In a special episode, Liz fills in for Mary to explore the Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial, in Washington, DC. After Lincoln's assassination, a group of formerly enslaved individuals raised money for this statue to honor Abraham Lincoln. How did this sculpture fit into the greater story of African American rights during Reconstruction?
0:00 Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode, a Bridge from the Past. This series is for students like you to get ahead in your US history class by using art as a starting point to think about big and often messy questions and concepts. I’m going to be your host today. I am Liz Evans. And today we’re actually going to look at a monument, a statue,
0:21 the Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Friedman’s Memorial Memorial in Lincoln Park in Washington, DC. And we’re going to ask ourselves the question, how can historical narratives help us understand statues and memorials? Let’s jump in and see. So again, today we’re going to look at a statue, and we’re going to look
0:42 at how historical narratives help us understand statues and memorials. We’re looking specifically at the Emancipation Memorial. Like, anytime you look at a statue, a piece of art in history, one of the biggest things is just to observe. So before you start to analyze, ask questions, just observe.
1:04 So this is a statue. This is actually two different views of the statue. So you can kind of see a little bit of both sides. So as I’m looking at this, I can see what looks like Lincoln. Lincoln is a pretty obvious figure. There’s somebody below him. I can’t really tell if the person is crouching.
1:26 If they’re standing up, it looks like there’s something in Lincoln’s hand on top of the pillar. There are stars on the pillar. There looks to be a little date on the bottom of the pillar. It’s kind of hard for me to see. I see that Emancipation is written on one of the images.
1:50 Notice, too that Lincoln has clothes on, but the other man in the statue does not have clothes on. And then I notice a shield too. So there’s actually a lot of complexity and a lot of things to notice. And one of the best ways to kind of start looking at anything is just to look and notice.
2:10 So I have some questions, too, that I really want to make sure, because with any primary source, I need to take a step back and look at context. So again, I’m wondering who the other person is with Lincoln. I’m wondering what the scroll is in his hand. I’m wondering why Lincoln is clothed and the other man is not.
2:33 So there’s a lot of different questions that can come up if you just let yourself look and start to observe and really wonder. So we do have some context to this. So I’m going to dive in a little bit and explain some of these things and show you context through a couple of different narratives. So this statue actually was after Lincoln was assassinated.
3:00 So one of the really interesting things here is that formerly enslaved persons and black veterans of the Union Army raised the money for the statue. So actually, a woman by the name of Charlotte Scott started this. She started with the first $5 she had ever made. And much of the remainder came from a group called the Emancipation Group
3:21 which, again, had a lot of black veterans from the Union Army. They raised what totaled to be about $20,000, which is a lot of money. And they knew that they wanted to somehow honor Lincoln and honor his contributions to emancipation. So they started to do this.
3:41 Congress actually threw in the rest of the money. They didn’t get any say in the design, though. So the monument was born in 1876 as the Freedman’s Memorial to Abraham Lincoln. And it was designed by Thomas Ball, who was an American sculptor. In his work. You know, Lincoln was assassinated
4:04 and Ball sought to commemorate what he considered to be the president’s greatest achievement which was the Emancipation Proclamation, the executive order that Lincoln issued on January 163 which granted freedom to the enslaved people held in Confederate territories. And it was a really significant milestone toward full emancipation.
4:27 So I talked about the man that who was kneeling. He was actually a person by the name of Archer Alexander. And Thomas Ball took his likeness from a photo. He wanted to make sure that his sculpture had somebody who was a real person.
4:47 He wanted to sculpt that. And an interesting thing here is Archer Alexander was actually the first black man to be in a national monument. So this is the monument that he was in. He himself has an incredible story which would be a totally different episode. But I really recommend digging in and learning a lot more about
5:08 Archer Alexander who, again, was the model for this. He had no say in it, just like the people who raised the money. Another interesting piece of this is that Frederick Douglass, who’s a great order at the time many people know who Frederick Douglass is delivered a speech about
5:29 Lincoln’s conflicted legacy talking about that Lincoln was reluctant to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and he actually wrote a letter to a newspaper called The New Republic criticizing the statue. And in this, he is quoted as saying
5:50 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 couch it on his knees like a four footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man. There is room in Lincoln Park for another monument
6:10 and I throw out the suggestion to the end that it may be taken up and acted upon. So when we’re looking at the whole of this statue, there’s so many different stories. You have the story of the Emancipation Group who raised the money. And again, the woman who started everything was Charlotte Scott who was an informally enslaved woman.
6:34 Then Thomas Ball, who is an American sculptor creates this image of Lincoln and of the formerly enslaved person. And again, we don’t know if the person is rising up if they’re kneeling because it’s kind of up into interpretation. Everybody looks at these statues through
6:57 different lenses and has different ways of looking at things. Archer Alexander is another piece of the narrative. He was a man who had been formerly enslaved. Again, he himself has a really interesting life. And then the last piece of that is Frederick Douglass talking about the statue. And Frederick Douglass, his famous order at the time,
7:20 he has this fiery speech, and then he goes on to talk about it further in a letter. The interesting thing, too, is that Frederick Douglas actually had a little bit of a relationship. He knew Lincoln. So all of these stories kind of tie into what this monument is.
7:41 So this is the monument. There was actually a copy of this monument in Boston, which is Thomas Ball. That’s where he’s from. That was taken down in 2020. Again, we started here by asking, how can historical narratives help us understand monuments?
8:02 Looking back at this, I know that the man that’s kneeling is Archer Alexander. I know a little bit more about who raised the money for this and why they raised the money, why it’s called the Emancipation Memorial. There’s still some more questions I have.
8:23 But that’s kind of the nice thing, is we can look at this, we can really dive in and find these little intricacies. And that is, when we look at statues, we look at historical narratives. These are the things that we’re asking and we’re analyzing and we’re noticing. So today we learned that formerly enslaved
8:46 persons, as well as the black veterans of the Union Army, raised money for the statue and that Thomas Ball was the person who designed it. Archer Alexander was the model for the kneeling man, and that Frederick Douglas definitely had his opinions. A really interesting piece of the Frederick Douglass
9:08 letter is that it actually wasn’t discovered until hundreds of years later when historians started digging and wondering, what did Douglass think? He was there? He had to have had some views. So it actually took a lot of digging to find this letter. And it’s a long letter, and you can find it.
9:28 It’s available online. They’ll actually be linked underneath this YouTube video, if you’re interested. So, really, I want to turn it back to you. What do you think? How can all of these historical narratives help us understand images and statues of the post Civil War period of anything like this? There’s so much more to dig in.
9:49 These are just a few parts of the narrative. There were almost 20,000 people at the unveiling of the statue, so they have narrative. So now I turn it over to you. So what do you want to know more about? What do you think the next question is in our discussion? Let us know in the comments below if you’ve learned something. Make sure to like this video and subscribe to our channel to be in the know about
10:12 other videos, content and resources to help you throughout the school year. I’ll be back soon with another statue coming up to think again about the complex and layered stories that make up our nation’s history and also the different lenses we look through and the different narratives we learn about that help us understand the bigger picture.
10:34 Until next time. Take care. Thank you.
