A statue depicting former President Abraham Lincoln freeing a slave will be removed after 141 years in Boston.
Boston Art Commission members unanimously voted this week to remove the statue following accusations that it is racially insensitive due to the slave kneeling before Lincoln. Boston Mayor Martin Walsh also supported the commission’s vote.
“After engaging in a public process, it’s clear that residents and visitors to Boston have been uncomfortable with this statue, and its reductive representation of the Black man’s role in the abolitionist movement,” Walsh said in a statement. “I fully support the Boston Art Commission’s decision for removal and thank them for their work.”
Known as the Emancipation Group statue or the Freedman’s Memorial, the statue has been in place near Boston Common since 1879 and depicts Lincoln standing over a newly-freed slave, Archer Alexander. An inscription on the statue reads, “A race set free/and the country at peace/Lincoln/Rests from his labors.”
The Boston Art Commission heard nearly two hours of debate on whether to remove the statue on Tuesday night. It will cost at least $15,000 to remove and could be loaned to a museum or put away in storage.
“Public art is storytelling at the street level. As such, the imagery should strike the heart and engage the mind,” said Ekua Holmes, vice-chairwoman of the Boston Art Commission. “What I heard today is that it hurts to look at this piece, and in the Boston landscape we should not have works that bring shame to any groups of people, not only in Boston but across the entire United States.”
The statue is a copy of a statue in Washington, D.C., according to the Boston Herald, which has also garnered recent attention from protesters calling for its removal. Demonstrators vowed last week to topple the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park, saying they would return later in the week to tear “this motherf—-r down.”
The statue had been paid for by freed slaves and dedicated by the African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, according to Fox News.
Protester at Emancipation Monument claims that they will be tearing down the monument Thursday at 7 PM.
Also calls for them to show up at Senator Mitch McConnell’s home. pic.twitter.com/LJ8e2f5KRG
— Richie?McG? (@RichieMcGinniss) June 23, 2020
Law enforcement officials erected fencing around the statue, protecting it from the protesters who planned to pull it down.
“It’s the position of he’s getting up,” President Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity last week of the statue. “He’s being freed by Abraham Lincoln. And I can see controversy, but I can also see beauty in it.”
Trump last week authorized law enforcement to arrest anyone destroying or vandalizing monuments, with vandals facing up to 10 years in prison. He later signed an executive order aimed at protecting monuments, statues, and memorials.
