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THE BATTLE FOR MODeRN 1923


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the statue of liberty is a black woman

The Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty was first imag­ined by a French abo­li­tion­ist named Édouard de Laboulaye.

Laboulaye was the pres­i­dent of a com­mit­tee that raised and dis­bursed funds to new­ly freed who were once en­slaved. He was an ar­dent sup­port­er of the Union and was so proud of Amer­i­ca for eman­ci­pat­ing the for­mer­ly en­slaved, he got to­geth­er a group of oth­er French abo­li­tion­ists at his home in Ver­sailles to plan a gift to Amer­i­ca in hon­or of the once enslaved.

They de­cid­ed on a mas­sive stat­ue that could serve as a mon­u­ment for the whole world that free­dom was possible.

Laboulaye part­nered with sculp­tor Frédéric-Au­guste Barthol­di to be­gin work­ing on the piece. The de­sign went through sev­er­al iterations.

The first was a Black woman with the shack­les on her arms and feet bro­ken, arms lift­ed in the air in pow­er. The sec­ond it­er­a­tion was a Black woman with a torch in one hand and bro­ken shack­les in her oth­er hand. The next and fi­nal it­er­a­tion is a Black woman, mod­eled af­ter a Black Egypt­ian peas­ant woman (no­tably, she is also a Mus­lim) that was in­spired by the Nu­bian mon­u­ments at Abu Simbel.

 

The fi­nal stat­ue is dressed as Lib­er­tas, the Ro­man god­dess who wore the cap of the for­mer­ly en­slaved and was wor­shipped by those were eman­ci­pat­ed that were once en­slaved in the Ro­man Empire.

In one hand she holds a torch to light the way for the en­slaved to find free­dom and the oth­er holds a tablet with July 4, 1776 in­scribed in Ro­man nu­mer­als to mark the cre­ation of a coun­try that prid­ed free­dom over all things.

 

The bro­ken chains on her feet stayed, but she is un­shack­led. The chains can still be seen peak­ing out of her robe.

The stat­ue was ded­i­cat­ed in 1886, but at that point the Re­con­struc­tion had been a com­plete fail­ure and Jim Crow laws were be­ing passed all over the South. So any men­tion of the orig­i­nal in­ten­tion of the stat­ue as a cel­e­bra­tion of the abo­li­tion of slav­ery was erased by White jour­nal­ists, politi­cians, and educators.

 

Also of note, the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty was ded­i­cat­ed pri­or to El­lis Is­land be­ing des­ig­nat­ed the largest “im­mi­grant in­spec­tion sta­tion” cre­at­ed in 1892. Nat­u­ral­ly as the first mon­u­ment seen by im­mi­grants, she evolved into a sym­bol for im­mi­grants, asy­lum seek­ers, and refugees. Which is gen­er­al­ly how she is un­der­stood today.

How­ev­er, very few peo­ple know her real sto­ry as sym­bol of the end of slav­ery or that she’s a Black woman, which re­al­ly sucks.

 

 

ad­den­dum
I con­tact­ed Snopes about re­view­ing their 20 year old ar­ti­cle that in­cor­rect­ly dis­cred­its this his­to­ry. This in­for­ma­tion is read­i­ly avail­able from the Na­tion­al Parks Ser­vice and the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty Mu­se­um if you’d like to pur­sue your own research 🙂.

 

—na­tal­ie michelle

Flom­mist Na­tal­ie Michelle does­n’t have a bio. She just rants. Copy­right © 2020 Na­tal­ie Michelle.

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Der Tung
Posted
Fri 19 Jun 2020

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