Protesters Set Their Sights on Honest Abe ‘Emancipation’ Statue in DC’s Lincoln Park

Black Lives Matters demonstrators have been casting an ever wider net as of late, as the movement and the ideologies within it grow in both scope and volume.

This has been particularly true in the case of historical monuments being targeted by protesters over the course of the last few weeks.  At first, the focus seemed to be honed in on the Confederacy, as monuments to General Robert E. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis were removed from public spaces all around the nation.

The protesters then targeted Christopher Columbus over his treatment of the native people of the Americas, and then George Washington due to his ties to slavery.

Even the great emancipator Abraham Lincoln is not safe, albeit not for his actions, but for a very specific depiction of him in our nation’s capital.

Lincoln Park saw an uneasy standoff Thursday night after left-wing protesters said they planned to rally against a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., that had been paid for by freed slaves and dedicated by the African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Authorities took precautions in advance. They installed fencing and deployed police visibly, but social media videos showed that a light crowd of vocal protesters had gathered nearby.

The issue wasn’t with the 16th President of these United States, but with the rest of the statue.

The Emancipation Memorial depicts Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation and standing over a shackled, kneeling African-American. It represents the abolition of slavery in the United States — but opponents have criticized the juxtaposition of a looming Lincoln above a black man on one knee.

The monument can be seen in the tweet below:

The designers of the Emancipation Statue in Lincoln Park in DC didn’t take into account the views of African Americans. It shows. Blacks too fought to end enslavement. That’s why I’m introducing a bill to move this statue to a museum. pic.twitter.com/A0MOnISH1N

— Eleanor Holmes Norton (@EleanorNorton) June 23, 2020

President Trump has been staunch in his opposition to protesters’ vigilante efforts to remove these historical monuments, and has threatened those who would vandalize these statues with up to 10 years in prison.