ARCHER ALEXANDER

I am hoping you have seen today’s (Saturday, December 20, 2025) column in the Washington Post by Philip Kennicott, illustrated by David Mahoney of “HOW TO FIX, REMIX OR ERASE AMERICAS’S MOST OFFENSIVE MONUMENTS” .
As toppled statues are being remounted, an art critic and an illustrator examine and edit three controversial memorials, with the first featured being the Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.

“In 1876, Frederick Douglass addressed a crowd of some 25,000 people gathered to dedicate a new monument to Abraham Lincoln. The Emancipation Memorial statue, a life-size bronze also known as the Emancipation Group or Freedman’s Memorial in what is now Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., depicts the 16th president standing above a nearly naked kneeling man, just liberated from his shackles. The speech was given on the April 14 anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, and the crowd remembered the president as the Great Emancipator, as a martyr, as the second father of the nation.” Read more at this link https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/interactive/2025/monuments-edited/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f010

In his column, Kennicott introduces the new Archer Alexander Memorial in St. Louis (in Normandy at 2101 Lucas and Hunt) at the St. Peter’s United Church of Christ Cemetery that sculptor Abraham Mohler, has designed in partnership with the St. Louis Chamber of Arts and the friends and family of Archer Alexander. “Last year, on April 14, yet another memorial idea was introduced to honor Alexander individually at the graveyard near St. Louis where he is buried. The designer, Abraham Mohler, would depict Alexander as a vibrant young man, free and emerging triumphantly from the shadows of history.” The site of Archer Alexander’s unmarked burial is listed on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

“Recent efforts to secure federal funding weren’t successful, but supporters are raising private funds and the hope is to finish the statue by late next year or early 2027. It would be located near the unmarked grave where Alexander was buried.”

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