What Would Abolitionist Frederick Douglass Think About Tearing Down Lincoln's Emancipation Memorial?

Tré Goins-Phillips : Jun 25, 2020
Faithwire.com

It would certainly grieve Douglass today to see the group of progressive protesters vowing to destroy and tear down that very memorial, which was paid for by freed slaves, as well as its replica in Boston.

[Faithwire.com] I have to wonder: What would Frederick Douglass think of us? (Image: Emancipation Memorial /AP-Michael Dwyer /via Faithwire)

On Tuesday, a group of angry protesters gathered around a statue the great abolitionist—himself a formerly enslaved man—dedicated on April 14, 1876, 11 years after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all enslaved peoples.

Standing in the DC plaza surrounded by prestigious members of the US Congress, members of the US Supreme Court, and President Ulysses S. Grant, Douglass delivered a stirring address in celebration of what later became known as the Emancipation Memorial.

Douglass, more than the memorial itself, was moved by the peacefulness of the celebration in the nation's capital. He was overcome to see people with white and brown skin coming together to celebrate not only the unveiling of the statue, but the freedom it represented.

Here's a particularly poignant portion of Douglass' dedication:

I cannot forget that no such demonstration would have been tolerated here 20 years ago. The spirit of slavery and barbarism, which still lingers to blight and destroy in some dark and distant parts of our country, would have made our assembling here the signal and excuse for opening upon us all the flood gates of wrath and violence. That we are here in peace today is a compliment and a credit to American civilization, and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future.

I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice; but simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow citizens and ourselves, and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then; the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races—white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour.

It would certainly grieve Douglass today to see the group of progressive protesters vowing to destroy and tear down that very memorial, which was paid for by freed slaves, as well as its replica in Boston.

To Douglass, the Emancipation Memorial's placement in the heart of Washington, DC, was itself a form of peaceful protest—a beacon of freedom and a reminder of the equal place black Americans ought to have in the country:

"We are here in the District of Columbia, here in the city of Washington, the most luminous point of American territory; a city recently transformed and made beautiful in its body and in its spirit; we are here in the place where the ablest and best men of the country are sent to devise the policy, enact the laws, and shape the destiny of the Republic; we are here, with the stately pillars and majestic dome of the Capitol of the nation looking down upon us"... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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