Douglass shines at Lincoln statue unveiling

The Lincoln Memorial is the most famous monument to our 16th president, but it was not the first. That honor belongs to a statue in Lincoln Park, one mile dead east of the Capitol and about two miles from the better-known memorial.

The statue was unveiled April 14, 1876 — 11 years to the day after the president was shot and 46 years before the Lincoln Memorial was completed. It was entirely paid for by people who formerly had been enslaved.

One from Virginia, Charlotte Scott, heard that the president was killed and initiated the campaign with the first $5 she earned. A movement followed for a Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to the dead president, with many black veterans among the contributors. The 44th Congress appropriated $3,000 for its 10-foot-high pedestal.

The statue’s site east of the Capitol was a natural. The area had served as a camp for Federal troops during the Civil War, and Lincoln Hospital was built near it. In 1867, the vacant land was officially renamed Lincoln Square. It is now in the care of the National Park Service.

The unveiling of the statue was marked by a resounding speech from Frederick Douglass, whom Lincoln had come to know during the war. Indeed, Douglass was perhaps the one black man Lincoln got to know well. He had met Lincoln in 1862 and had helped recruit for the U.S. Colored Troops. Douglass’ son Lewis was a sergeant in the 54th Massachusetts, whose attack on Fort Wagner, S.C., was depicted in the movie “Glory.”

Over time, Lincoln became so impressed by Douglass that he invited Douglass to his second inaugural reception at the White House in March 1865. Douglass was the only black guest. The president went out of his way, to the chagrin of some, to shake Douglass’ hand and talk with him.

This developing acquaintance with Douglass might have been among the factors — Lincoln’s reaction to his reception by overjoyed blacks in Richmond after that city fell was another — that caused the president to consider equal rights and black citizenship near the end of the war.

That may have cost him his life. John Wilkes Booth at first plotted only a kidnapping. After Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender on April 9, Booth heard Lincoln say from the White House balcony that black veterans deserved equal rights. Booth said, “That means … citizenship. Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That’s the last speech he’ll ever make.”

Less than a week later, picking up mail at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, Booth heard that Lincoln was coming there that night and improvised a murder plot. Historians have often described Booth’s motive as revenge. But Booth had enlisted in the Richmond Grays militia unit in 1859 to witness the suppression of John Brown’s raid and had been present at his hanging. All this suggests another assassination motive — racism and Booth’s anger at Lincoln’s evolving struggle against it.

In his 1876 speech, Frederick Douglass addressed the controversy — even then, it was a controversy — of why it took Lincoln so long to embrace emancipation and, afterward, the separate issue of equal rights.

At Lincoln Park today, a few stray tour buses visit, not just to see the Lincoln statue, but also to see one of black educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955). Bethune-Cookman College, a historically black institution in Daytona Beach, Fla., is partly named after her.

Erected in 1974 by the National Council of Negro Women, the statue shows an aged Bethune, cane in one hand, handing with the other what looks like a scroll of diplomas to a young black girl and boy; around the pedestal, she is described as leaving them a “thirst for education,” “racial dignity” and “a desire to live harmoniously with rest of mankind.”

The statue was designed by Robert Berks with the same massive modernist energy of his Kennedy Center bust of John F. Kennedy. The memorial was the first on capital parkland for any American woman and only the second for any black. The first is 50 yards away, paired with Lincoln in what was called the Emancipation Statue.

The monument, sculpted in the high neoclassical style, got its name because it depicts Lincoln and a kneeling ex-slave. With his right hand, Lincoln holds the Emancipation Proclamation. With his left, he reaches down to the freed man, who gazes at him with gratitude.

The ex-slave figure was modeled on the last man captured under the Fugitive Slave Act, Alexander Archer. Despite symbolizing emancipation, some said and still say that the image implies white supremacy: Lincoln visually dominates.

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