JUDY WOODRUFF: There has been considerable conversation in this country about the taking
down of Confederate statues. And there are many more debates brewing over the messages
other memorials and statues send and how many people -- and how people may perceive them
differently.
In the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., stands the Emancipation Memorial, which
has been a flash point in recent weeks.
Jeffrey Brown talked to four black Americans on their varied views on it.
It's part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas.
JEFFREY BROWN: A hot afternoon in Washington, D.C.
MAN: I am reminded every single day that I am less than a white person, whether I want
to admit it or not.
JEFFREY BROWN: A heated exchange over a statue of Abraham Lincoln standing above a kneeling
newly freed African-American man.
Last month, protesters gathered to demand the statue be taken down. The National Park
Service, which oversees the site, erected a fence as protection.
MAN: This statue represents the oppression of black people.
JEFFREY BROWN: Twenty-year-old Harvard University student Glenn Foster helped organize the call
to take down the statue. He sees one man shirtless, with broken shackles, at the feet of another
man in a position of power.
GLENN FOSTER, The Freedom Neighborhood: How are you going to represent black people looking
free when you have them kneeling before a white man? What imagery does that teach our
young children about our history?
And what does it teach them moving forward in terms of achieving their liberation and
freedom on their own terms? A lot of older people believe that this statue is fine because
of the context of where they have learned why it came to be, instead of understanding
the imagery of what it stands for.
JEFFREY BROWN: Set in Lincoln Park, the bronze statue, called the Emancipation or Freedman's
Memorial, dates to 1876. It was intended to honor the slain president and commemorate
the Emancipation Proclamation, the document signed by Lincoln to end slavery in the Confederacy.
MARCIA COLE, Charlotte Scott Reenactor: Let's not negate what happened. You need physical
evidence that proved what happened, so that we don't all have to go back to it again.
That is the black story.
JEFFREY BROWN: And even now, instead of a symbol of subservience, Marcia Cole sees one
of liberation.
MARCIA COLE: I see an African-American male figure on one knee, and he's in the process
of rising. His head was up. He was looking forward to a life of freedom. And that's what
I saw.
JEFFREY BROWN: At the recent protests, Cole picked up a bullhorn, debated with activists,
and made her case for keeping the statue.
For her, there's more to the story. She's studied and reenacts the life of Charlotte
Scott, a freed African-American woman who raised funds to build the memorial after Lincoln's
assassination.
MARCIA COLE: She could be my -- one of my direct ancestors. So, I want people to know
that they were individuals who had individual stories.
JEFFREY BROWN: And for you, that story, her story, is intrinsically tied to the statue,
and, therefore, keep the statue?
MARCIA COLE: Exactly. It honors her generosity of heart.
I would like to see it remain as a teaching moment. Without artifacts, visual artifacts,
people tend to forget. And this statue there, while it may provoke some discomfort, discomfort
is good, because it would inspire inquiry.
JEFFREY BROWN: The complications and complexities were there from the start, a memorial paid
for by blacks, but designed by a white sculptor, Thomas Ball, in a process controlled by a
white-run organization.
The famed abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass delivered an historic speech at the
1876 dedication, but also took the opportunity to point to Lincoln's shortcomings.
And now those complexities have burst anew, as the nation confronts the continuing racism
of today and the legacy it was built upon.
MARCUS GOODWIN, D.C. Council Candidate: It's not Lincoln that's at issue. I'm fine with
us memorializing him. He was a monumental president. But it's this depiction, specifically,
that's the issue.
JEFFREY BROWN: Last month, 30-year-old Marcus Goodwin, a Washington, D.C., real estate developer
and now candidate for the D.C. Council, climbed atop the memorial, in public contrast to the
kneeling man below.
He then launched a petition drive to remove and relocate the statute.
MARCUS GOODWIN: There's no such thing as erasing the past.
My solution is to bring this into a museum, where it can be properly contextualized, where
a docent can walk you through and tell you the history and the intentionality behind
the art, because it doesn't achieve its intended goal. People see it. They see demeaning imagery.
And maybe it's a generational divide, but we don't see the type of fair and equitable
representation that's inherent in the American dream.
JEFFREY BROWN: If you take down or change the symbols or the monuments, is that not
changing the past in some way?
MARCUS GOODWIN: No. In fact, you're changing the future. And you're doing it for the better,
I would say.
JEFFREY BROWN: Goodwin says he got the idea of relocating the statue after seeing reports
of a similar demand in Boston, home to a replica of the same monument.
And in recent days, the Boston Art Commission voted unanimously to take it down, without
yet deciding where it should go.
It's a debate, says Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch, with many layers.
LONNIE BUNCH, Smithsonian Institution Secretary: It is about history, but it's about who we
are as a nation and who we want to be going forward.
JEFFREY BROWN: One of the nation's preeminent historians, Bunch was also founding director
of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
He told us he's for keeping the Emancipation Memorial, but perhaps adding another statue
next to it of Frederick Douglass, for example, creating, in a sense, more history.
LONNIE BUNCH: What I want to see is a reasoned process that allows us to discuss, that allows
us to bring history before we make decisions of pulling things down.
I think that, yes, we could take that statue down. We could replace it with a statue that
just talks about the enslaved. And I think what we'd do is, while, on the one hand, we
enrich our understanding, on the other hand, I think we lose the opportunity to help people
understand more about Lincoln and who he was and what he did.
JEFFREY BROWN: Bunch thinks these memorials will have to be considered case by case, local
decisions by commissions that move with care, but relatively quickly.
Does that surprise you, how kind of deep this has gone?
LONNIE BUNCH: It has surprised me both how deep it's gone and how rapid it's gone, because
the challenge is, the statue itself doesn't give us any sense of complexity, nuance or
ambiguity. But that's what history does.
JEFFREY BROWN: That may be a lot to ask in an America so greatly divided, seemingly not
in a mood for complexity and nuance, now fighting over its past and future one statue at a time.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown.