Washington, D.C., District of Columbia story
A Monument Funded by Freedom
Public art often comes from government grants, but the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park has a much more personal origin. Dedicated in 1876, this bronze statue was actually fu…
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Public art often comes from government grants, but the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park has a much more personal origin. Dedicated in 1876, this bronze statue was actually funded by formerly enslaved people using their own hard-earned wages. The sculpture, designed by Thomas Ball, depicts Abraham Lincoln and an enslaved man modeled on Archer Alexander.
It was unveiled on the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln's death, with Frederick Douglass delivering the keynote address to a crowd of over twenty-five thousand people. The monument's orientation has even shifted over time; in 1974, it was rotated east to face the Mary McLeod Bethune memorial. It stands as a powerful testament to the agency of those who fought for their own freedom and wanted to ensure that history remembered it.
Updated June 2026