A statue depicting a formerly enslaved man kneeling before President Abraham Lincoln was taken down from a Boston park on Tuesday after officials this summer voted unanimously for its removal. The bronze statue, called “Emancipation Group,” had been a fixture of Park Square in downtown Boston since 1879, but has long courted criticism for its depiction of a freed man at the feet of Lincoln. The statue is a replica of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, a bronze statue intended to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation, the executive order Lincoln signed that ended slavery in the Confederacy. In the statue, Lincoln holds the Emancipation Proclamation in his right hand. His left hovers above the shirtless back of Archer Alexander, a formerly enslaved Black man who joined the Union Army but was recaptured under the Fugitive Slave Act.

Source: New York Times December 29, 2020 19:45 UTC