Emancipation Memorial

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The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group, is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent national memorial was dedicated in 1922. Designed and sculpted by Thomas Ball and erected in 1876, the monument depicts Abraham Lincoln holding a copy of his Emancipation Proclamation freeing an enslaved African American man modeled on Archer Alexander. The slave is depicted on one knee, about to stand up, with one fist clenched, shirtless, with broken shackles at the president's feet. The wages of former slaves funded the Emancipation Memorial statue. The statue initially faced west towards the United States Capitol until it was rotated east in 1974 to face the newly erected Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial. The statue is a contributing monument to the Civil War Monuments in Washington, D.C., on the National Register of Historic Places.

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