ARCHER ALEXANDER

Today, our Nation celebrates the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, born on February 12, 1809 in Larue County, Kentucky. As a formerly enslaved woman named Charlotte Scott said “the best friend the colored people ever had.” In 1876, her dream of a memorial to our slain hero would be realized and the first monument ever erected by the formerly enslaved people, freedmen, and U.S. Colored Troops, in our country, was dedicated. The monument was placed in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Park, facing the Capitol, and with him would be “the last fugitive” slave ever captured under Civil Law in Missouri, a freedom seeker named Archer Alexander.

Archer Alexander (1806-1880) was a freedom seeker who was placed on the monument at the suggestion of Dr. William Greenleaf Eliot, and the Western Sanitary Commission, who greatly gave their assistance in 1869, and helped to see this memorial to Abraham Lincoln a reality. Archer Alexander’s burial was placed on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2023, and is the great-great-great grandfather of Muhammad Ali.