Washington, D.C., District of Columbia story
A Legacy in Bronze
In Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill, there's a statue with a deeply personal origin story. The Emancipation Memorial, dedicated in 1876, depicts Abraham Lincoln and an enslaved man mo…
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In Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill, there's a statue with a deeply personal origin story. The Emancipation Memorial, dedicated in 1876, depicts Abraham Lincoln and an enslaved man modeled on Archer Alexander. What makes it truly remarkable is how it was funded; formerly enslaved people contributed their own wages to pay for the bronze.
At its unveiling, Frederick Douglass gave the keynote address before a crowd of over twenty-five thousand people. For nearly a century, the statue faced west toward the Capitol, but in 1974, it was rotated east to face the Mary McLeod Bethune memorial. It stands today as a powerful testament to the people who fought for and funded their own representation in the capital.
Updated June 2026