The Emancipation Memorial, also called the Freedman's Memorial, stands in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Thomas Ball designed and sculpted it. The bronze was cast in Munich in 1875 and dedicated on April 14, 1876, with Frederick Douglass as the keynote speaker. The National Park Service owns it.
Donations came only from emancipated citizens, mainly African American Union veterans. Charlotte Scott gave the first five dollars. Lincoln holds the Emancipation Proclamation, and a kneeling man modeled on Archer Alexander rises from broken shackles at his feet.
The monument has long drawn criticism. Douglass wrote in 1876 that the Black man should stand erect on his feet like a man. In 1974 the statue was rotated to face the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and its future has been debated in Congress.
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