Washington, D.C., District of Columbia story
A Bronze Legacy
In Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill, you'll find the Emancipation Memorial, a bronze work dedicated in 1876. What makes this statue truly remarkable isn't just its design by Thomas Ba…
Read the story
In Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill, you'll find the Emancipation Memorial, a bronze work dedicated in 1876. What makes this statue truly remarkable isn't just its design by Thomas Ball, but how it was paid for. The monument was funded by the wages of formerly enslaved people.
When it was unveiled, 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's a powerful piece of public art that shifted its gaze as the city's own understanding of freedom evolved.
Updated June 2026