[Lincolnparkdc] Fwd: Ken Burns on monuments

Thu Jun 25 13:38:00 EDT 2020

Today’s Wall Street Journal article on the Emancipation statue controversy just posted and already has nearly 500 comments. Tomorrow’s protests will likely draw a big crowd and hopefully it won’t turn violent but I’m thinking with marshals and National Guard on scene, our lovely neighborhood park will be getting lots more publicity, likeky not all desired. I’m  copying for full text below link.
Michael Singer

https://www.wsj.com/articles/protesters-take-aim-at-statue-of-lincoln-with-kneeling-ex-slave-11593090836

Lincoln Statue With Kneeling Black Man Becomes Target of Protests
Authorities gird against plan to topple Washington’s Emancipation Memorial
[https://images.wsj.net/im-202143?width=620&size=1.5]
The statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
PHOTO: JIM LO SCALZO/SHUTTERSTOCK
By
Ted Mann
Updated June 25, 2020 12:44 pm ET

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WASHINGTON—Protesters said they are planning to topple a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the capital meant to commemorate his 1863 proclamation freeing enslaved people in the rebel states at the height of the Civil War.

The Emancipation Memorial, erected in 1876 in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill, has long drawn criticism for its paternalistic imagery of a standing President Lincoln looming over a kneeling black man and his broken shackles. The planned attempt to remove the statue, originally set for Thursday, comes as protesters across the country have taken aim at statues <https://www.wsj.com/articles/protesters-topple-statues-beat-up-state-senator-in-madison-wis-11593016272> of slave owners, Confederate leaders <https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/protests-george-floyd-death-2020-06-20/card/G9cxoa2nzhBJmuCg1O7c> and purveyors of white supremacy.

Demonstrators who want the bronze statue gone gathered Tuesday evening in Lincoln Park to condemn its design, which they say implies that it was only Lincoln’s benevolence, and not the efforts of black people, that ended American slavery. Later, in an Instagram post, organizers said they would converge on the statue on Friday evening instead.

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“As a black man, when I see that statue, I see that my freedom and liberation only lies with white people,” said Glenn Foster, 20 years old, of Montgomery County, Md., an organizer of the Tuesday rally.

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Clashes broke out Monday as protesters tried to pull down a statue of 19th century President Andrew Jackson, a target of demonstrators because of his treatment of Native Americans. The statue is located in Lafayette Square, near the White House. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Organizers said they planned to return in force to pull the statue off its granite pedestal, and authorities said they were ready to counter the effort. Several dozen officers from Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Park Police watched over demonstrators Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, the Army said it was activating 400 members of the D.C. National Guard, at the request of the Interior Department, to help guard government property and monuments in the capital.

Asked about the protesters’ plans, an MPD spokesman said: “We certainly will not allow for the destruction of property in the city.”

Some politicians are endorsing the official removal of the Lincoln statue as a new chapter of protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd<https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/latest-updates/protests-george-floyd-death>widens into a reckoning with the legacies <https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-seeks-to-protect-monuments-from-vandals-with-tougher-sentences-11592922449> of past American leaders whose good deeds were once seen as outweighing their flaws, and with the anachronistic, and for many offensive, styles in which they are honored.

In the past month, demands to remove<https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/protests-george-floyd-death-2020-06-23/card/xnohKa0XgAMyqNGhvjj2> and, in some cases, actions to tear down public statuary and honors have broadened, from monuments like those to Confederate generals to previously unchallenged memorials to U.S. presidents including George Washington,  whose statue was torn down <https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/protests-george-floyd-death-2020-06-19/card/skpo4TA6NzjOI3V76UQH> in Portland, Ore., and Ulysses S. Grant, a monument of whom was toppled in San Francisco.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who is Washington’s nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives, said she would introduce legislation calling for the removal of the Lincoln statue.

“The designers of the Emancipation Statue in Lincoln Park in DC didn’t take into account the views of African Americans,” Ms. Norton tweeted on Tuesday<https://twitter.com/EleanorNorton/status/1275505825558204417?s=20>. “It shows. Blacks too fought to end enslavement. That’s why I’m introducing a bill to move this statue to a museum.”

Any effort to remove the memorial by force was shaping up as a flashpoint between protesters and those who say their efforts have gone too far.

President Trump said during a Wednesday news conference at the White House that he would sign a “very strong” executive order by the end of this week that would toughen penalties for destroying monuments and statues.

“Now they’re looking at Jesus Christ,” he said, an apparent reference to calls by one prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement to banish representations of Christ as a white man. “They’re looking at George Washington. They’re looking at Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson. Not going to happen, not going to happen. Not as long as I’m here.”

Mr. Trump didn’t provide details on the order. Current legislation, which applies specifically to vandalizing veterans’ memorials, mandates prison terms of up to 10 years. His order wasn’t expected to address any legislative or administrative action to remove statues.

The Lincoln Park statue has drawn controversy from the moment of its dedication on the eve of the 11th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination.

Funds for the memorial were raised entirely from freed slaves, including black veterans of the Union Army, according to the National Park Service, which controls the park. But the organization in charge of the commissioning and purchase of the statue was a charity in St. Louis, the Western Sanitary Commission, which was run by whites, according to the Park Service.

In attendance at the monument’s dedication was President Ulysses S. Grant, who as Lincoln’s top general won the Civil War and as president sought to fend off the ultimately successful Southern efforts to end Reconstruction and return power fully to whites.

At its dedication, Frederick Douglass, who had escaped slavery to become a venerated author and abolitionist leader, delivered a historic oration about the fallen president that praised Lincoln but grappled with what he and others believed was his slow embrace of abolition.

“Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent,” Douglass said, according to a published version of his remarks. “But measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.”

Other published accounts note that Douglass also ad-libbed an observation that prefigured the current controversy. Douglass, one attendee wrote, criticized the statue for depicting a kneeling black man, rather than a standing, free man.

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The National Park Service has acknowledged misgivings about the statue in the past. A 2018 re-enactment of the statue’s unveiling, complete with a performance of Douglass’s address, included a question-and-answer session with area residents about their misgivings and feelings about the statue. In 1974, the service erected a statue of the civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune across the park from the Emancipation Memorial, and turned the statue of Lincoln to face the new monument, rather than the Capitol.

“Across the country, the NPS maintains and interprets monuments, markers, and plaques that represent painful or controversial chapters in our nation’s history,” a Parks Service spokeswoman said. “We are committed to telling the larger story behind these memorials and to encouraging dialogue and reflection on their legacies today.”

Mr. Foster, one of the organizers of the Tuesday rally, said this week’s events came together in just the past several days, amid late-night text-message sessions about how to keep the momentum of the protests over police killings of black people.

Mr. Foster got a gentle challenge from Howard Banks, a high-school history teacher in Prince George’s County, Md., who said he had shown up in part to honor Douglass.

“He lost his life for us,” Mr. Banks said to Mr. Foster, gesturing to the statue of Lincoln.

“If you talk about bringing it down: No,” Mr. Banks said in a later interview. “You can bring down those that work for racism. Those like [Confederate Gen. and Ku Klux Klan leader] Nathan Bedford Forrest, absolutely. Killed 300 blacks at the battle of Fort Pillow, 1864. Yes, take him out. But Lincoln lost his life for the folks, all of us.”

Those sentiments found little resonance with some neighborhood residents like Maurice Cook, who briefly addressed the crowd at sunset. “No one here created this, but you have a chance, an opportunity, to destroy it,” he said.

Mr. Cook later said he had lived in the neighborhood for 20 years. Asked how long he had been bothered by the statue, he answered: “Twenty years.”

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 25, 2020, at 12:56 PM, Mia Grosjean <mia at miagrosjean.com> wrote:

 Thank you Leslie!  Perfectly said and I so appreciate your weighing in so eloquently.  Mia

Begin forwarded message:

From: Leslie Tentler <tentler at cua.edu<mailto:tentler at cua.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Lincolnparkdc] Ken Burns on monuments
Date: June 25, 2020 at 11:19:19 AM EDT
To: lincolnparkdc at lincolnparkdc.info<mailto:lincolnparkdc at lincolnparkdc.info>
Reply-To: lincolnparkdc at lincolnparkdc.info<mailto:lincolnparkdc at lincolnparkdc.info>

No, Lincoln didn't "give" anyone freedom but he was still essential to the ending of slavery.  The slaves did indeed force his hand, what with large numbers flocking behind Union lines in the early days of the war, and they did indeed fight for their freedom as members of the Union Army.  But sentiment in the North was strong in the grim winter of 1862-63 for a negotiated end to the war which would restore the Union, leaving slavery in place in the states where it already existed.  It was Lincoln's issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation that made the war a war to end slavery--something voters in the North effectively ratified by re-electing him in 1864.  Politics do play a role in all great moments of social change.
Leslie Tentler

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 10:21 PM Bill Sweeney <bill.sweeney at me.com<mailto:bill.sweeney at me.com>> wrote:
I’d love to see us honor the donations of freed people while also honoring the realities of history. Lincoln didn’t “give” anyone emancipation; African-Americans fought and died for freedom.

I’d contribute to an effort to reforge this frankly offensive statue into something more historically accurate.

Cities are for people, not for statues. Things change and civilization marches forward.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 24, 2020, at 1:43 PM, Martha Huizenga <martha at mhuizenga.com<mailto:martha at mhuizenga.com>> wrote:

As we move through this time when we are questioning the monuments in every city. This video was sent to me and I really liked it.

https://youtu.be/W08bTFhuwKs<https://eur05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FW08bTFhuwKs&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cbb657273e2fc45d497c008d81928a6a5%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637287009867466660&sdata=K1fMESj5k1S9qJMbQ3MPjAGCzZSBMDUgjOEw3jjLLjM%3D&reserved=0>

Martha
---
Martha Huizenga
cell 703-626-4026
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