Crowds gathered in Lincoln Park at the base of the Emancipation Statue Tuesday night for a protest organized by “The Freedom Neighborhood” calling for the removal of the statue. The protest comes on the heels of an incident in Lafayette Park Monday night over an Andrew Jackson statue.

Organizers said they want the Emancipation Statue “gone” and openly said they will not be working with police.

“To achieve true justice, we are not working with the police, nor will we seek any relationship with them,” the group wrote in an Instagram post advertising the protest. “In order to create change, we will do so by any means necessary. If you want a revolution, it won’t happen by being peaceful.”

Here is a Tweet showing video from the protest.

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

They are not alone.  One of their ideological and intellectual brethren is sitting DC Non-Voting Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

DC Congresswoman to introduce legislation to remove Emancipation Memorial from Lincoln Park

D.C. Congresswoman Del. Eleanor Norton announced plans Tuesday to introduce legislation to remove the Emancipation Memorial from Lincoln Park.

The scene shows former President Abraham Lincoln standing over a kneeling, un-clothed African-American slave who has broken chains on his feet and hands.

This is a Tweet from Del. Norton expressing her justification.

The designers of the Emancipation Statue in Lincoln Park in DC didn’t take into account the views of African Americans. It shows. Blacks too fought to end enslavement. That’s why I’m introducing a bill to move this statue to a museum. pic.twitter.com/A0MOnISH1N

— Eleanor #DCStatehood Holmes Norton (@EleanorNorton) June 23, 2020

“The designers of the Emancipation Statue in Lincoln Park in DC didn’t take into account the views of African Americans.”

Here is the actual text from the National Park Service website describing the significance of this monument:

Consecrating the place to Lincoln’s memory really took hold several years later, however, through the efforts begun shortly after the assassination by an African American woman named Charlotte Scott of Virginia. Using her first $5 earned in freedom, Scott kicked-off a fund raising campaign among freed blacks as a way of paying homage to the President who had issued the Emancipation Proclamation that liberated the slaves in the Confederate States. The campaign for the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln, as it was to be known, was not the only effort of the time to build a monument to Lincoln; however, as the only one soliciting contributions exclusively from those who had most directly benefited from Lincoln’s act of emancipation it had a special appeal.

The funds were collected solely from freed slaves (primarily from African American Union veterans), however, the organization controlling the effort and keeping the funds was a white-run, war-relief agency based in St.Louis, the Western Sanitary Commission. The monument was designed by Thomas Ball, cast in Munich in 1875 and shipped to Washington in 1876. Congress accepted the Emancipation Group, as it came to be known, from the “colored citizens of the United States” for placement in Lincoln Square and appropriated $3,000 for a pedestal upon which it would rest.

Washington.org, the website for the City of Washington DC, provides this additional information:

The bronze statue, designed by sculptor Thomas Ball, was built almost entirely with funds donated by former slaves and dedicated in 1876. The statue was unveiled on the 11th anniversary of Lincoln’s death, with Frederick Douglass delivering the keynote address to President Ulysses S. Grant and more than 25,000 people in attendance. In 1974 the statue was rotated east to face a memorial built to honor Mary McLeod Bethune, also located in Lincoln Park.

The transcript of the keynote address given by freed slave Frederick Douglass is available online.

In the transcript of that speech, this information was given by Mr. James E. Yeatman, President of the Western Sanitary Commission:

For several years it has stood there in its place greatly admired, but not finding the direction of its rightful destination. But, when the artist heard of the possible use to which it might be put, as the memorial of freedom by the emancipated slaves themselves, he at once said that he should hold it with that view until the Commission were prepared to take action, and that the price to be paid would be altogether a secondary consideration. When the description was given to the other members of the Western Sanitary Commission they sent for photographs, four of which, presenting the group at different points of view, were taken in Florence, and forwarded to them. They at once decided to accept the design, and an order was given for its immediate execution in bronze, in accordance with the suggestions made by Mr. Ball. The original group was in Italian marble, and differs in some respects from the bronze now to be inaugurated. In the original, the kneeling slave is represented as perfectly passive, receiving the boon of freedom from the hand of the great liberator. But the artist justly changed this, to bring the presentation nearer to the historical fact, by making the emancipated slave an agent in his own deliverance. He is accordingly represented as exerting his own strength with strained muscles in breaking the chain which had bound him. A far greater degree of dignity and vigor, as well as of historical accuracy, is thus imparted. The original was also changed by introducing, instead of an ideal slave, the figure of a living man—the last slave in Missouri taken up under the fugitive-slave law, and who was, at one time, rescued from his captors, (who had transcended their legal authority,) under the orders of the provostmarshal of St. Louis. His name was Archer Alexander, and his condition of legal servitude continued until the emancipation act became the law of the land A photographic picture was sent to Mr. Ball, who has given both the face and manly bearing of the negro. The ideal group is thus converted into the literal truth of history without losing anything of its artistic conception or effect. The monument, in bronze, now inaugurated, was cast at the Royal foundry in Munich. An exact copy of the original group as just designed by Mr. Ball has been executed by him in pure white Italian marble for the Western Sanitary Commission, and will be permanently places, as “Freedom’s Memorial,” in some public building of St. Louis. Of the eminent sculptor, Thomas Ball, to whose genius and love of country the whole praise of the work is due, it is unnecessary to speak. His design was accepted, after three years’ diligent seeking, solely on its merits. But it is a source of congratulation to all lovers of the American Union that this monument, in memory of the people’s President and the freedmen’s best friend, is from the hand of one who not only stands in the foremost rank of living artists, but who is himself proud to be called an American citizen.

The amount paid Mr. Ball for the bronze group was $17,000, every cent of which has been remitted to him. So you have a finished monument, all paid for The Government appropriated $3,000 for the foundation and pedestal upon which the bronze group stands, making the cost in all $20,000. I have thus given you a brief history of the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument, and how and why the Western Sanitary Commission came to have anything to do with it. To them it has been a labor of love. In the execution of the work they have exercised their best judgment—done the best that could be done with the limited means they had to do it with. It remains with you and those who will follow to say how wisely or how well it has been done. Whatever of honor, whatever of glory belongs to this work, should be given to Charlotte Scott, the poor slave woman. Her offering of gratitude and love, like that of the widow’s mite, will be treasured in Heaven when the gifts of those rich in this world’s good shall have passed away and been forgotten.

This memorial was commissioned and paid for by freed slaves.  The man in question kneeling before Lincoln is a depiction of actual freed slave Archer Alexander.  His position represents “the emancipated slave an agent in his own deliverance.”  A freed slave, the most famous freed slave in American history, was honored to give the dedication of the memorial.

Yet the mob wants it destroyed.  A DC Delegate says the monument “didn’t take into account the views of African Americans.”  Social Justice activists call it “a monument to white supremacy.”

Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth.  The facts of history dispute their every claim.

But they do not care.  They have the power and they will destroy a 144-year-old monument because they can.

They must be stopped.  This movement must be stopped.

This is no longer about some particular grievance against the Confederacy if it ever was that, to begin with.  This is about the power of ignorant self-righteous anger gone unchecked.