Washington, D.C., District of Columbia story
A Monument Funded by Freedom
The Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park tells a story of determination and dignity. Dedicated in 1876, this bronze statue depicts Abraham Lincoln and an enslaved man, modeled af…
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The Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park tells a story of determination and dignity. Dedicated in 1876, this bronze statue depicts Abraham Lincoln and an enslaved man, modeled after Archer Alexander. But the most striking detail isn't the sculpture itself—it's how it was paid for.
The monument was funded by formerly enslaved people who contributed their own hard-earned wages. One of the first donations was a five-dollar gift from a woman named Charlotte Scott in 1865. When it was unveiled, Frederick Douglass gave the keynote address before a crowd of over twenty-five thousand people.
Though it originally faced west toward the Capitol, it was rotated east in 1974 to face the Mary McLeod Bethune memorial, shifting its gaze toward another pillar of Black history.
Updated June 2026