Campaigners are calling for the removal of twin Emancipation memorials in Washington DC and Boston that depict a freed slave kneeling at Abraham Lincoln’s feet. The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Emancipation Group and the Freedman’s Memorial, was erected in Washington’s Lincoln Park in 1876. Three years later, a copy was installed in Boston, home to the statue’s white creator Thomas Ball. Critics said the statues, originally intended in 1876 to celebrate liberation, look more like subservience and supremacy in 2020. Tory Bullock“I’ve been watching this man on his knees since I was a kid,” said Tory Bullock, a black actor and activist leading the campaign to get the Boston memorial removed.

Source: Irish Independent June 26, 2020 03:00 UTC