Unveiled this week. Note that this was not a response to the recent removal of Confederate statues across the city, but had been planned for more than a decade. The sculptures are by Thomas Jay Warren. Not bad, actually. I could live with statues like these replacing the Confederate heroes on Monument Avenue.
In keeping with the mood of the moment, the sculptures both depict nameless black civilians. The question of how Virginia's slaves were actually emancipated is set to the side to focus on the victims of oppression. Five people are named on the base of the central statue, all also black civilians.
Once upon a time the story of emancipation in Richmond would have been told with a statue of Abraham Lincoln entering the city, with a crowd of grateful black folks around him. I get why that wouldn't fly today but on the other hand it seems obtuse to me to ignore the part played by the Union Army and the Federal Government in the events of 1865.
Ok, sure, Lincoln and Grant have plenty of their own monuments elsewhere. But what about the black troops who made up a large part of the force besieging the city, and were the first to enter? Couldn't we acknowledge them?
Fortunately that row of empty statue plinths along Monument Avenue offers us a chance to do right by more of the people who made emancipation happen.
Once upon a time the story of emancipation in Richmond would have been told with a statue of Abraham Lincoln entering the city, with a crowd of grateful black folks around him. I get why that wouldn't fly today but on the other hand it seems obtuse to me to ignore the part played by the Union Army and the Federal Government in the events of 1865.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it depends on which context you want to view a monument to emancipation in.
Sure, Lincoln was pivotal to the act of emancipation - to navigating a course through the events and circumstances of the time to bring about the desired result.
...but what if instead the work is concerned with the experience of emancipation - with the lived reality of the people who gained their freedom?
A statue of Lincoln would be a monument to an emancipator - not a monument to emancipation itself. Lincoln never experienced emancipation. He enable it, but he himself cannot embody it. Emancipation itself is defined far more by the anonymous civilians who actually underwent it, rather than by the Union Army and the Federal Government who helped bring it about.
You wouldn't choose George Washington as the focus for a monument dedicated to America as a whole. You wouldn't choose a scientist, no matter how much they contributed to the cause of science, as the focus for a monument to science. Ditto for a monument to medicine, or to industry, or to equality, or to justice. The Statue of Liberty would be woefully diminished if it depicted a historical liberator rather than the personification of liberty itself.
A monument to emancipation should depict the human experience of those set free - the emancipator can and should be celebrated separately.