Gifted To America, This Statue Held False Promises

New York City Statue of Liberty
Shonda Buchanan
March 20, 2021

The Statue of Liberty was originally constructed to celebrate Black freedom post Emancipation – not to celebrate immigration! But white supremacy has hidden its true meaning for too long. You need to know the truth about this iconic monument.

#1 – Edouard de Laboulayeto, a French abolitionist, commissioned artist Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi to create the Statue of Liberty in 1865 to celebrate the emancipation of Black enslaved people. It wasn’t originally about immigration at all.

#2 – At the statue’s right foot, broken shackles and a chain disappear under the dress, reappearing in front of the left foot – the broken chains symbolizing freedom from slavery.

#3 – After a change of heart, Laboulaye asked Bartholdi to substitute a broken shackle and chain in Lady Liberty’s hands with tablets, which is a reference to Moses delivering the Israelites from slavery. This would be less controversial than broken chains, given the Civil War had just ended.

#4 - Black newspapers hated the statue for its hypocrisy. Slavery had ended, but “liberty” was still not accessible to Black people. “Shove the Bartholdi statue, torch and all, into the ocean until the ‘liberty’ of this country” is genuinely extended to its Black residents, argued the The Cleveland Gazette.

The Statue of Liberty itself is majestic, but its symbolism for us still fails to follow through – 135 years after enslavement!

Knowledge is definitely power, and when we expose the precious lies that America likes to tell about itself, we empower ourselves with the truth!

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