[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 1, 2023)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E81-E82]
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

                      Wednesday, February 1, 2023

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to introduce the Emancipation 
Statue Removal Act, which 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 
similar entity. This bill is part of a series of statue and memorial 
removal bills I am introducing during Black History Month.
  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

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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, 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.''
  In 2020, 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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