What I Didn’t Know Was…

So many of you are thinking what in the First Confederate Alabama of Ten Missing Negro’s am I using that picture of a black man kneeling at Lincoln feet as my feature photo for? Well readers, I have my reasons. Now when I first saw the photo of Emancipation Memorial, I thought to myself “I’d rather go to a Mississippi MAGA rally wearing a black tee shirt with a picture of Al Sharpton on it saying “Just Shoot Me “than be caught posing for a statue in that position… and after researching the story, I still wouldn’t have done it. As I said the statute is called Emancipation Memorial and it was sculpted by Thomas Ball. If it looks familiar to my friends in the DMV area, (DC-Maryland-Virginia) that’s because you may have seen it at Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill off Massachusetts Avenue. It’s been there since 1876. So I told you that Thomas Ball was the sculptor, but he may not have even seen it at it final resting place because he made a habit of not going to any of the unveilings of his public works creations. The statue was funded almost entirely by freed slaves. The first donation came from a woman named Charlotte Scott who donated five dollars. Now five dollars back in 1875 was a lot of dough. It had the same purchasing power as $130.00 in today’s market. You could buy yourself thirty Popeyes Chicken Sandwiches and a Coke for that kinda money.. Anyway, so yeah.. freed slaves funded most of the work. There was talk about the Lincoln Memorial Association merging their funds with the black folks funds but because as history says “they had a difference of visions,” that didn’t happen. I think they wanted Lincoln to be posed handing the black man a skull cap and a squeegee but…. okay they don’t say what the difference was. Anywho, our folks raised fifty thousand dollars with a little help and the stature was formally unveiled on April 14, 1876. The government kicked in another three thousand dollars for the pedestal it stands on. Now the statue was not without its black detractors. One prominent detractor was Frederick Douglass… so before I go any further I was just thinking as I wrote this that Frederick Douglass was in that park… I had walked through that park many times back in the day on my way to Union Station… if you go up there now, its a park full of parents with their kids and people walking their dogs crapping on everything… the dogs.. not the people… at least I don’t think the people are crapping on stuff… anyway the statue is in the center of the park and where there once was a mostly black patronage, those days are long gone. Welcome to gentrification 101. But just to think.. hundreds of black people were there on April 14, 1876 and Frederick Douglass and Ulysses Grant were the keynote speakers… speaking at that shizzy azz statue I have passed hundreds of times…. I’ll never look at it the same way. Anyway, so yeah the statue had its detractors and Douglass was one of them. In fact right after he gave the keynote speech at the dedication, he wrote to the “National Republican” newspaper to share his thoughts. He wanted to erect more dignified monuments to freed black people. “The negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude. What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man.” Remember back then black folks were Republicans as a gesture of loyalty to Lincoln. I can just picture Douglass writing to the National Republican today…

Mr. Farr Right
666 DeVil Ave
Pickaninny, Mississippi 88888
Co National Republican Media Group

Dear Mr Right,

With regard to the Lincoln statue, I feel the negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude. What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man. I would be sincerely grateful if you could present my view in your most honorable and reputable publication.
Sincerely,
Frederick Douglass
***************************
Freddy
1866 Segre Gation Lane
Uppity Moefo, Illinois 11111
Co Freed Dem Publications

Freddy,
Where did you get that typewriter from that you wrote this letter with? One of ours is missing. It will go a lot easier on you if you turn yourself in immediately. As an incentive and because I know you want to be a credit to your race, I am enclosing a $1.00 off coupon to Mr Chikin Wing which the sheriff says he will let you use once you settle in and if you don’t back sass. Since you will not have a typewriter to write your views with, let’s just put that on the back burner for now until you get out. As always, we are keenly interested in the Black view and invite all correspondence. Please tell all of your associates that we wish they would come by here and try us.
Sincerely,
Mr Farr Right
********************************


Yes Frederick, things have changed quite a bit in the 140 odd years since you sent that letter… but not that much. Remember when I made that joke about a skull cap and a squeegee? When the work was first envisioned, instead of the curly haired black man stooping at Lincoln’s feet, one of the designs had the black man wearing a Liberty Cap also known as a Phrygian cap. What is a liberty cap? That’s one in the picture on the right. Ain’t you glad they didn’t go with that?

So the black man who modeled for the statue is named Archer (Archie) Alexander. Archie was born in Rockbridge County Virginia in 1806. Rockbridge is a few miles south of Lynchburg, Virginia. He was enslaved by John Alexander who was a Presbyterian Elder. John died in 1828 and left ownership of his slaves to his son James Alexander. James left Virginia making his way to Missouri shortly after his father’s death where he died of cholera in 1834, leaving behind four orphans. So the executor of James Alexander’s estate took the four orphans back to Virginia, but left Archie and the other slaves in Missouri to complete work on a large home he was building. There Archie married Louisa and they had seven children. Later on Archie would tell his biographer two of his children were sold at that time because they wasn’t having it.. history says it was because of behavioral problems but I think they took after their father, who was considered a troublemaker because what he wanted more than anything else was his freedom.. and that dude made it happen.


By 1840 the executor of Alexanders estate had returned and Archie and his family were sold off to different owners. Archie was sold off to a man named Richard Pitman. Now Pitman was a racist of the third kind and a confederate sympathiser. He along with his cohorts had been stockpiling weapons to use against the Union guards who were guarding a nearby militarily important bridge. In the meantime they had cut the timbers supporting the bridge so any troop movement across it would collapse it. Well Archie snuck away and put the lips on them. Yep he snitched… “I’ll bet you won’t sell my folks again!” So everybody knew he had done it and they was gonna do him like like the racist Tibeats said in 12 Years A Slave.. “I will have flesh.. every bit of it!!” Alexander hauled it. Although he was later captured by slave catchers, he manage to escape. Slave Catcher: Boy now that we got you.. we gonna get it good. You went and put the mouth on us?? When I finish sharpening this knife, Ima come back heh and Ima peel your potatoes and drop em in a boiling hot pot of faqdat!! You just wait till I get back…” So yeah.. Alexander had to escape or else… Alexander made his way through the Underground Railroad and landed in St. Louis. There at a public market he met the wife of William Greenleaf Eliot while looking for work. Eliot is the person who would one day write the biography of Archie Alexander. As an aside I had to look up the difference between biography and autobiography. For those who don’t know an autobiography is written by the person whose life it is, while a biography is written by someone else about a person’s life. Anywee… She hire Archie and took him home. Now Eliot was a strange type of man when it came to abolition. Although he detested slavery, he didn’t like the abolitionist either. As a matter of fact history records him as being “involved” with slavery. Now I don’t know what that means, but I wouldn’t trust his azz as far as I could throw an elephant. Anywho, upon Archie’s arrival, Eliot questioned him about his past. Eliot became suspicious when Archie started giving vague answers as to where he was from. It didn’t take him long to figure out he was an escaped slave. In those days if you were caught hiding an escaped slave, you could almost count on there being two pots of boiling hot faqdat on the fire. So a few years earlier when abolition was in style, he was running around telling everybody the only way he would return a slave to their master was over his dead body. After he saw all those dead bodies in the street and slaves being put in back of wagons, he had a change of heart. He got a certificate which allowed him to keep Archie for thirty days. He then wrote Archie’s massa that he wished to buy him. Now usually these things work out, but since Archie had put the mouth on them, they refused and vowed to get him back. Two days before the certificate expired the massa sent some slave catchers up there to get Archie. They got him and was fixing to deal with that stuff.. but fortunately for Archie, Eliot found him before the slavers had a chance to take him back to the place where the oaks trees grow tall and where the massa’s sit under them in big white chairs holding a rope and telling the other slaves.. “That boy made me do it..” Eliot hid him and kept him safe until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. With the help of other abolitionist Archie was also able to free his wife. Regrettably after the war Louisa, his wife returned to her old massa’s farm where she died two days later of what is recorded as a mysterious disease. Nowadays we call it poisoning… that’s right I said it. She is reportedly buried in St. Charles County, but her gravesite has not been located as of yet. Archie never returned to St. Charles County.

In 1869 Archie was working with a group that was building a statue of Lincoln, later to be known as Emancipation Memorial. It would formally be dedicated as Emancipation Memorial in 1922. But back in 1869 they called it the Lincoln statue. Thomas Ball had an acceptable model for the kneeling black man, but Eliot and his group wanted a former slave to be the model. Elliot gave Ball a photo of Archie and he became the model. So earlier I said that Ball did not attend the unveiling. After further research Archie did not attend the unveiling either. If I was the model I wouldn’t have attended it either. We talked about Frederick Douglass having a problem with the depiction of the kneeling black man, but did you know that in 2020 Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced legislation to have the statue torn down and that in 2021 they had to build a fence around it because protesters vowed to destroy it? The fence was later removed and Norton reintroduced her bill later that same year. Well it’s still up there last I heard, so Nortons bill hasn’t passed yet. One of the reasons that it’s still up there is because it is being protected by the same thing that protected the Archie Pike Memorial. Archie Pike was a Confederate General and had a statue at Judiciary Square on 3rd and Dst Nw. DC is a federal city and most of its statues are on federal land. Congress has to be notified for you to take em down. Anyway somebody took it upon themselves to pull down Pike’s statue. “On July 2, 2020, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the arrest and charging of a man who had helped destroy the Pike statue by pulling it from its base and setting it on fire. The DOJ’s complaint alleged that the man had been captured on video dousing the statue with a flammable liquid, igniting its private parts as it lay on the ground, and using the fire to light a cigarette.” Okay I put private parts in there… but them confederate generals deserve it…Anywee… other critics say that it is too paternalistic. I mean you got a white guy standing benevolently over a half naked black man kneeling on his knees who is thanking da massa for the glory of the breath and light of freedom.. “Oh Massa!!!… da light!! da light!!” Okay Im taking it a little too far… anywho… they say that the statue does not show the contributions that blacks gave for their own unshackling, like the tens of thousands that died fighting the confederates and the almost 200 thousand that enlisted in the Army and Navy… at half pay. They point to an original design that had Lincoln standing next to a uniformed Black soldier as being denied because it was too “expensive..” Come on now… you telling me its more expensive to carve a man standing up than it is to carve a man kneeling on his hands and knees…? yeah right… okay I’ll buy that bridge…
One good thing came about in 1974 that echoes from the past. I told you about the statement that Douglass sent to The National Republican after the statue was unveiled… in that same statement he also said, “There is room in Lincoln park for another monument, and I throw out this suggestion to the end that it may be taken up and acted upon.” In 1974 the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial was unveiled in Lincoln Park.. and guest what? The Emancipation Memorial was turned so that they would be facing each other… a 140 year nod to Frederick Douglass. Man it’s a lot of history in that park..
Archer Alexander died on December 7, 1880 in St Louis Missouri. His friend Eliot was at his side and recorded his last words in which he thanked God that he was going to die a free man. He is buried in the Common Field burying ground at St.Peter’s U.C.C.Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri. His grave is unmarked. William Greenleaf Eliot, the man who immortalized Alexander’s story in his book “The Archer Alexander Story; From Slavery To Freedom”, died January 7, 1887 at the age of 75. His grandson was the famous poet TS Eliot whose work inspired the broadway musical “Cats.” So we have come to the end of the story of Archer Alexander, but before I go I want to release one more revelation about Archie. Remember when I told you he had seven children? Seven children can produce a lot of descendants… and one of the descendants of Archer and Louisa Alexander was named… Cassius Clay… better known as Muhammad Ali.

Thanks for reading Hill1news.




Advertisement

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*