[Lincolnparkdc] NextDoor--petition and debate about Lincoln Park statue

[Leslie Tentler]

Three points in re the Lincoln statue:
No matter the deficiencies of the statue in our eyes or indeed those of
Frederick Douglass, the freedmen and women who donated funds for its
erection intended to honor Lincoln.  Not Douglass or Harriet Tuman or
Sojourner Truth or anyone else we might regard as more appropriate.  Who
are we to say that they got it wrong?
The African-American community in DC endowed the statue with a
liberationist meaning by choosing it as a site of their annual Emancipation
Day celebrations in the late 19th century.  Several community groups have
recently revived the custom.  Who are we to tell them that they were acting
out of ignorance?
We are fortunate in DC to have two other Civil War memorials with which the
Lincoln Park statue is in a fruitful dialogue:  the Shaw Memorial, a cast
of which is in the National Gallery, and the African-American Civil War
Memorial at 10th and U NW.  Taken together, the three provide a tutorial of
sorts with regard to the nation's evolving understanding of the Civil War's
meaning.  Sanitizing the past is almost a guarantee that people will fail
to understand the present in a full and nuanced way.
Leslie Tentler

On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 7:36 PM jobyl boone <jobyl01 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> FYI, there is now an ongoing debate and petition to remove the statue from
> Lincoln Park on NextDoor.
> https://nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=152195306
>
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