[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 31 (Thursday, February 18, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          INTRODUCTION OF THE EMANCIPATION STATUE REMOVAL ACT

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                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, February 18, 2021

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, today, I rise to introduce the 
Emancipation Statue Removal Act, the first in a series of statue and 
memorial removal bills I will introduce during Black History Month. The 
bill would remove the Emancipation Statue from Lincoln Park, a federal 
park in the District of Columbia, and require the Secretary of the 
Interior to donate the statue to a museum or a similar entity.
  The Emancipation Statue was dedicated on April 14, 1876, the 11th 
anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Although 
formerly enslaved Americans paid for this statue, it was designed and 
sculpted without their input, and it shows. The paternalistic statue 
depicting a Black man on his knees in front of President Lincoln fails 
to recognize African Americans' agency in pressing for their own 
emancipation.
  Understandably, recently liberated African Americans during the 
Reconstruction era were grateful for any recognition of their freedom 
in a country where they still experienced virtually total exclusion 
from American life. However, even at the time of its unveiling, 
prominent Black Americans expressed their displeasure with the statue's 
design, including Frederick Douglass. During his keynote address at the 
statue's unveiling, Frederick Douglass pointedly did not praise the 
statue. Rather, in a letter to the editor of the National Republican a 
few days after the unveiling, Douglass expressed his dismay at the 
statue: ``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 couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect 
on his feet like a man.''
  At the end of last year, Boston removed its replica of the statue and 
plans to place it in a publicly accessible location where it can be 
better contextualized. It is time for Congress to place the original 
statue in a museum, too.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

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