The Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park was funded entirely by freedmen and women. They should have gone with Harriet Hosmer's design — which would have showed Abraham Lincoln flanked by black Civil War soldiers — but the act of commemoration here doesn't deserve to be torched.
The statue is cringe. Even in its own time it was deemed paternalistic. Still, its debut in 1876 drew a crowd of 25,000 people. Frederick Douglass delivered the keynote. The big storyline at the time was about how it was paid for entirely by formerly enslaved people — a big deal. 
Capitol Hill residents would like nothing more than for protesters to tear it down. It's an important artifact, though! The line has migrated from tearing down all the Confederate memorials built during Jim Crow to terrorize African Americans if we are torching freedmen's statues
Harriet Hosmer’s design for the Emancipation Memorial was progressive! This design comes close to expressing the idea that the slaves freed the slaves — by putting enslaved people on pedestals beside Lincoln. This would look dope in the park
