Skip to content
LPBN-Icon-v1 (1)
The Right Coast
A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Boston mayor reportedly open to taking down 140-year-old statue of Abraham Lincoln | Just The News

By Thomas A. Smith

A statue of Abraham Lincoln that has stood in Boston since 1879 is reportedly in the crosshairs of the city’s mayor, yet another monument in danger of coming down as an anti-statue zeitgeist sweeps the country. 

The Emancipation Memorial was originally erected in Washington, D.C., in 1876. The National Park Service says that funds to build it were collected “solely from freed slaves (primarily from African American Union veterans).” A copy of the statue was donated to Boston three years later. 

Yet activists are now calling for its removal, citing what they say are its racist optics: It depicts Lincoln standing over a kneeling, freed black slave.

Mayor Marty Walsh, meanwhile, is allegedly sympathetic to those demands. 

via justthenews.com