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    A 4TH OF JULY MESSAGE TO AMERICA: LADY LIBERTY WEARS SHACKLES

    BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

     

    A 4TH OF JULY MESSAGE TO AMERICA: LADY LIBERTY WEARS SHACKLES

     

    For over a hundred and twenty years the Statue of Liberty has greeted immigrants to these shores with open arms and the promise of the kind of freedom that they had never known. As a result, that towering, stately, and majestic lady has come to represent the quintessential symbol of freedom, liberty, and justice for people all over the world. Just the sight of her brought hope and inspiration to millions of European immigrants as they entered New York Harbor, and that initial vision sustained them as they started their new lives in America.
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    The scene must have seemed surreal as their boats slowly moved past her in the harbor. Oceans of tears must have flowed as the immigrants stared in awe at this magnificent lady. In her right hand she held the burning flame of passion and enlightenment--outstretched and high, as though reaching for the very face of God. In her left arm she held the tablet that represents the rule of law, and the guarantee of equal justice for all, and on her right foot, the broken shackle of a freed slave. That's right–millions of European immigrants were welcomed to America by the statue of a freed slave.
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    On the pedestal upon which she stood, were the words that had inspired their journey. It says... "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse to your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
    As a child in school I was taught that the idea of the Statue of Liberty was conceived by a Frenchman, Edouard Laboulaye, as a monument to the collaboration and friendship of the United States and France during the Revolutionary war, and that it was sculpted by sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. But at the urging of one of our readers I revisited the issue, and did a little research. As a result, I found that Laboulaye did indeed conceive of the Statue of Liberty, but not as a monument to the Revolutionary War. The Statue of Liberty was conceived as a monument to the end of slavery, and to honor those men, women and children who had been enslaved.
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    Laboulaye conceived of the Statue of Liberty in 1865. That was a hundred years after the Revolutionary War, but it just happened to be the very year that the Civil War came to an end. And it also turns out that Laboulaye wasn't just any Frenchman--he was not only an abolitionist who had dedicated his entire life to the abolishment of slavery, he was a leader of the French abolitionist movement. In addition, the sculptor who actually created the Statue of Liberty, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, was connected with the abolitionist movement as well.
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    In an Associated Press interview, Richard Newman, a research officer at Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research is quoted as saying, "It is widely believed in academic circles that Laboulaye meant for the statue to honor the slaves, as well as mark the recent Union victory in the Civil War and the life of Abraham Lincoln."
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    The Statue of Liberty wasn't actually completed until 1886, but there's a 21 inch replica of the statue that was completed in 1870 on display at the Museum of the City of New York. That replica, or, original, is not white, it's terra cotta (brownish-orange), and it is said to have been designed in the likeness of a Black woman. In addition, the replica has a broken shackle around her left hand. The 151 foot statue in New York Harbor has a more . . . Discrete shackle around her foot.
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    The words at the base of the Statue of Liberty from the poem, "The New Colossus", by Emma Lazarus wasn't added to the statue until 1903, during a time when there was a huge surge in European immigration, and that's when the fiction began. During an interview with the Associated Press, Rebecca M. Joseph, a Boston-based Park service anthropologist is quoted as saying, "There is wide agreement that Liberty's now-familiar association with immigration was not planned by the statue's creators."
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    Nevertheless the thoroughly ironic scene of European immigrants weeping as they passed the Lady's flame must have played out thousands of times. It's the stuff that movies are made of–and just like most movies, the irony of a magnificent subplot churned discretely beneath the surface. One of the ironies is that now, many the grandchildren of some of those very same immigrants--those indigent immigrants that Lady Liberty welcomed into this country with open arms--have used voting fraud, unfair labor practices, redlining, blatant discrimination, and every other device, in an attempt to undermine the very people that we now know the Lady was originally created to embrace.
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    So irony is the operative word in this piece, and exquisite in its irony is the deplorable state of ingratitude of many of the people that this magnificent symbol of Black liberation welcomed to the country. It is all but a complete indictment on human nature that some of the very same people that Lady Liberty served as a symbol of hope, and who she welcomed to this country as literal vagrants, would now attempt to slam the door of hope and justice on the very people that she was created to enshrine.
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    Considering that ironic twist brought a tear to my eye as I researched this issue, because as a kid, I couldn't help but be awed by the majesty of that Lady--and that was in spite of the fact that I thought she was created for everybody but people like me. But now to find that she was created specifically for me, and even that was stolen, is almost too much to bear. Just think of how many young Black lives might have been salvaged by just the simple nudge to their self-esteem that something so grand and majestic could have provided had they known what it was created to represent. Just that knowledge alone could have given them the sense of pride, dignity, and purpose that might very well have sustained them throughout their lives.
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    But in spite of that, or maybe because of it, the Lady continues to hold her flame high as a tantalizing subplot silently plays itself out beneath the surface. For even as pernicious ingrates continued to indulged in their evil machinations, yet another immigrant quietly sailed passed the Lady's burning flame. He was a solitary young man from Kenya who presented papers in the name of Barack Obama.
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    I'm sure the immigration official laughed as he examined the papers and said, "Who?" But little did he know that it wouldn't be long before the entire world would answer his question.

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    Eric L. Wattree

    Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

    Comments

    This has always been my favorite.  Thanks for posting this history again. 


    Thank you, TRK.


    Excellent post Eric

    The story of the "Star Spangled Banner" is also left out of the history taught in schools. Francis Scott Key was an aristocrat who like, most white men off his time was not anti-slavery. He did believe that slaves should be treated humanely and supported sending free blacks ( not slaves) back to Africa. Key opposed the formation of the Colonial Marines by the British. The Colonial Marines were escaped slaves mustered into service by the British. The Colonial a Marines were offered their freedom. The idea of armed black men capable of fighting whites went against the beliefs of Key.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps_of_Colonial_Marines#/search

    Key was a lieutenant in the Continental Army. His unit ran into a brigade of Colonial Marines in August 1815. The Colonial Marines defeated the Continental Army in the Battle of Bladenburg. The British then went on to burn the City of Washington, D.C.. 

    A few weeks later, Key was aboard a British ship begging for the release of a friend, Dr. William Beane. While on the British ship, Key saw the Battle of Fort McHenry on September 13, 1815. The Americans lost but inflicted heavy losses on the British. The battle inspired Key to write the "Star Spangled Banner". We all know the first stanza. What is not common knowledge is the third stanza. Key was still bitter over the loss to the Colonial Marines and included a line in the poem addressing the treachery of black men who sought their freedom by any means necessary 

    The third stanza

    And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
    That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
    A home and a Country should leave us no more?
    Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
    No refuge could save the hireling and slave
    From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
    And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
    O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

    Key wanted the blood of the disloyal slaves to wash away the pollution of the British troops

    http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2016/07/star-spangled-bigotry-th...

    There is a short history of the full story of what is now the National Anthem

    https://vimeo.com/166881889

     

     


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