ARCHER ALEXANDER

June 19 is the federally recognized day of celebration of the day when Maj. General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Union troops marched into Galveston, Texas, and ordered the recognition of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, now known as Juneteenth. On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced that the Emancipation Proclamation would go into effect on January 1, 1863, promising freedom to enslaved people in all of the rebellious parts of the Southern states of the Confederacy, including Texas. President Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, two months before the enslaved people in Texas saw freedom. Congress, under former President Joe Biden, would recognize this important event in our Nation’s history in 2021, as Juneteenth National Independence Day.

Eleven years later, on the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, the formerly enslaved people of this country would dedicate the first Memorial monument to him, in Lincoln Park, in Washington, D.C. When a formerly enslaved woman named Charlotte Scott heard of the murder of “the best friend the colored people ever had,” she began a drive to raise a monument to Lincoln. The monument called “The Emancipation Memorial” portrays Lincoln standing with a formerly enslaved man named Archer Alexander, who has broken his own chains, and is shown rising as he views his future as a free man. He had won his own freedom on September 24, 1863, for his services to the military. The monument, funded totally by the formerly enslaved, still stands today, in Lincoln Park, one mile east of the Capitol.

The Emancipation Memorial would stand alone in our Nation’s Capital, testimony to Lincoln’s Proclamation of 1863, for forty-six more years, until the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922. The Lincoln Memorial lies two miles away from the Emancipation Memorial, where today the landscape of our Nation’s Capitol is under threat. Many organizations are concerned about the current threat and the diminishment of our Nation’s history. The history of a war that took the lives of over 600,000 men, including thousands of men of color, to put an end to slavery. History like this should not be forgotten, rewritten, or overshadowed by anyone. Today, David Kent, past-president of the Lincoln Group of Washington, D.C., of which I am a proud member, issued the following statement for which I stand in support: Lincoln Group Urges Caution on Changes to Lincoln Memorial…

“The Lincoln Memorial is Washington’s most visited monument, with more than eight million people a year coming to pay tribute to Abraham Lincoln, our nation’s greatest president. Even more will come as a new museum beneath the Memorial opens this summer.

The much-beloved Memorial is a monument to America’s unity and to the promise of equality for all. Any change to the Memorial, including the current administration’s proposal for a new pedestrian promenade and other unspecified changes, should only be undertaken after the widest possible public input and rigorous oversight by Congress.

This process should not be rushed and must be transparent. Abraham Lincoln belongs to all of us. The inscription behind his statue in the Memorial reads: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.“

Changes to the Memorial must not become yet another topic of division in an already sorely divided nation.”

As we celebrate Juneteenth on its 163rd anniversary, let us not forget all those who made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure it happened. No one should ever be allowed to overshadow our Nation’s history in any way, shape, or form. This history belongs to all of us, and as we celebrate, let’s remember those who made it happen. Let us not forget that United we stand, divided we fall.

Author: Dorris Keeven-Franke