In 1876, Frederick Douglass addressed a crowd of some 25,000 people gathered to dedicate a new monument to Abraham Lincoln. The Emancipation Memorial statue, a life-size bronze also known as the Emancipation Group or Freedman's Memorial in what is now Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., depicts the 16th president standing above a nearly naked kneeling man, just liberated from his shackles. The speech was given on the April 14 anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, and the crowd remembered the president as the Great Emancipator, as a martyr, as the second father of the nation.
Douglass's memories were more complicated. Lincoln was slow to embrace abolition, and Douglass resented what he felt was Lincoln's view that African Americans were responsible for the war. The statue, by sculptor Thomas Ball, was condescending and patriarchal, depicting a dignified, majestic Lincoln offering as a gift what is properly a right, freedom to a man who crouches in the dirt. A few days later, Douglass made his feelings explicit, writing words that mark a radical moment in the history of American memorials and monuments: "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."
Douglass's critique remains vital today, a radical permission to rethink, remake, repurpose and reinterpret our memorial landscape. With President Donald Trump promising a new National Garden of American Heroes and the restoration of statues taken down following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, we are on the cusp of a new age of memorialization that may return to old tropes of power, like some of those repurposed by Ball.
Art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott and illustrator David Mahoney have followed Douglass's lead, with an in-depth look at three deeply problematic American statues, considering proposals to rethink, if not outright eliminate, them. They explore how artists have used Douglass's speech to recast Ball's Emancipation Memorial; they deconstruct a disturbing allegory of "Africa" by one of America's greatest artists of the past century; and, finally, they burnish off the myths and falsehoods from a sculpture that memorializes something that should never have happened—the decimation of a landscape and its dispossession from those who lived here long before Lincoln, Douglass or America existed. As some political leaders double down on the old memorial language, they ask: What if we thought of our memorials as works in progress, to be improved, edited, reconfigured and even deleted?
In 1916, art critic and civil rights activist Freeman H.M. Murray wrote that the relation between Lincoln and the enslaved man reminded him of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, one of sin and absolution, and that an iron ball and shackles were emblems more of criminality than slavery. "Considered simply as a memorial, it would have been improved perhaps by removing the naked slave altogether." Other details suggest the larger historic purpose of the statue, which wasn't just to honor Lincoln but also to serve as a sign of reunification.
The bundled sticks along the edges of the pedestal on which Lincoln's right hand is resting are known as fasces, later a symbol of fascism. Here, they symbolize the strength of many small elements when joined, a reference to the hope of national unity during Reconstruction. But Lincoln and Alexander -- White liberator and Black slave -- don't meet each other's gaze, nor touch; the hope of unity doesn't seem to include Alexander at all.
Last year, on April 14, yet another memorial idea was introduced, to honor Alexander individually at the graveyard near St. Louis where he is buried. The designer, Abraham Mohler, would depict Alexander as a vibrant young man, free and emerging triumphantly from the shadows of history.
Recent efforts to secure federal funding weren't successful, but supporters are raising private funds and the hope is to finish the statue by late next year or early 2027. It would be located near the unmarked grave where Alexander was buried.
Africa, however, is portrayed differently than the others. French depicted Europe, Asia and the Americas as clothed women; but Africa is naked. And unlike the others, she is asleep—which represented a common view of the continent as underdeveloped and open to exploitation.
The carving of the sphinx to her right looks damaged and weatherworn, a symbol of an ancient, long-gone civilization; while the lion, like her nudity, could be a symbol of strength or something primitive and untamed.
When male artists used female figures to represent ideas—that the rising commercial power of the United States would absorb and transcend the mantle of European greatness—they erased particulars of identity and character, and substituted generic symbols. They believed they were creating images that were timeless and universal. But today, although these statues—the one for Africa in particular—are technically impressive, they feel inert, offensive and irrelevant.
Yet French’s statues, because they were commissioned for a monumental public building, remain on view today. Other artists of the same era were not so lucky—especially women and artists of color.
"That is usually the place that we would gather to host events, and it is always looming over us," say Sikowis Nobiss, founder of the Great Plains Action Society, a Native-led group that works to make Indigenous perspectives central to a range of climate and social justice issues. "It is a very whitewashed and white-supremacist depiction of the westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, all that stuff."
The sculpture was conceived and made around the time that the U.S. Army slaughtered hundreds of Native people at Wounded Knee in 1890. That year is also when the superintendent of the U.S. census declared that the "frontier" line of western expansion had effectively disappeared.
Lance Foster, who died this year, was a Native artist and author and the tribal historic preservation officer for the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. In an interview with The Washington Post before his death, he pointed to details of the statue: "The Native figure is sitting and looks dejected. He seems to be made at a smaller scale than the European American figures."
"The pioneer has a big, shiny ax, which he is holding right next to the Indian’s neck and shoulder, while the Indian has a paltry, stone tomahawk," Foster said. "He looks like a pet dog." The trio of figures -- father, son and demoralized Native man -- suggests a drama of loss, acceptance and the coerced transfer of land to White settlers. The presence of a father and son suggests the theft will be intergenerational and permanent, passed on through generations.
In 2020-2021, the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Monument Lab surveyed nearly 50,000 monuments and memorials in the U.S., and it found almost 1,000 that mention the word "pioneer." It uncovered a vast memorial landscape in which war and conquest are overwhelmingly represented while peace, the arts and science are mostly an afterthought.
"Monuments are not timeless, permanent, or untouchable," wrote the survey authors. "Each and every monument changes over time."
Today, another change is coming as the Trump administration repairs and replaces old monuments to the Confederacy and creates new memorials that use traditional forms, iconography and symbols to celebrate a familiar cast of leaders and heroes.
Douglass's dream of better memorials may have to wait a bit longer. But it shouldn't be forgotten.