Pre-dating the Lincoln Memorial by almost 50 years, the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, DC’s Lincoln Park depicts the 16th president freeing a slave. Designed and sculpted by Thomas Ball, it was funded by money donated by freed African Americans. Frederick Douglass spoke at the monument’s dedication in 1876, and expressed some criticism about its design and symbolism. It is still controversial today.
Historian and author Richard Norton Smith narrates.