Monuments to Fredrick Douglass

I did a search for monuments to Frederick Douglass, and was surprised to see the sheer number of them. I need to do some clean-up to the text in this blog entry, but I thought that readers might be interested in seeing this right now. I will finish editing the wording in a few days.

From Wiki: A statue of Frederick Douglass sculpted by Sidney W. Edwards, sometimes called the Frederick Douglass Monument, was installed in Rochester, New York in 1899 after it was commissioned by the African-American activist John W. Thompson. According to Visualising Slavery: Art Across the African Diaspora, it was the first statue in the United States that memorialized a specific African-American person.

Per the Maryland Office of Tourism: FREDERICK DOUGLASS STATUE AT MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY; the eight-foot tall bronze cast of Frederick Douglass, completed in 1956, stands in front of Holmes Hall on the campus of Morgan State University on the main historic academic quad. Artist James E. Lewis, chair of the Art Department, was chosen to design and sculpt the monument. Morgan State is a historically black university.

​

From NYC Parks: Frederick Douglass Memorial, located in Central Park North and Frederick Douglass Boulevard; dedicated September 20, 2011

Frederick Douglass Memorial; Location: Easton, MD; Year: 2011. Famed abolitionist, orator, and former slave, Frederick Douglass stands before the Talbot County Courthouse in Easton, MD. Douglass was born 5 miles from the site and was incarcerated in the courthouse as a youth.

From Wiki: Frederick Douglass is a 2013 bronze sculpture depicting the American abolitionist and politician of the same name by Steven Weitzman, installed in the United States Capitol Visitor Center‘s Emancipation Hall, in Washington, D.C., as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection.

From Wiki: Frederick Douglass is a public artwork in front of the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. The statue memorializes African-American abolitionist, suffragist, and labor leader Frederick Douglass. It was unveiled in 2015. The statue was designed by sculptor Andrew Edwards.

The Frederick Douglass Sculpture on West Chester University’s Campus in Pennsylvania. According to The WC Press, Douglass gave his last public address, before he passed away, at the University. The cane in the statue is based on a staff that was given to Douglass by Abraham Lincoln. Installed the 2010s.

Fredrick Douglass monument at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Hillsdale College was founded in 1844 by abolitionists known as Free Will Baptists. Douglass spoke at the college on Jan. 21, 1863. The monument was installed on-campus in 2017.

Statues of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass at the National Harbor in Prince George’s County, MD. Installation date unknown.

Monument to Frederick Douglass at the Maryland State House. Installed in 2020.

Douglass famously said during the Civil War, “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on the earth or under the earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.” He recruited black men to join the US military during the Civil War, and met with Abraham Lincoln twice during that conflict. 

“Blue Coats In A Gray City”: USCT Living Historians in Richmond, VA, April 2015

USCT Living Historians march through Richmond, Virginia in 2015
Source: From Timothy Fredrikson at the Stories of the United States Colored Troops Facebook Page

“Blue Coats In A Gray City” – In April of 2015, a detachment of United States Colored Troops marched from Rockett’s Landing on the James River, through the streets of Richmond, & to Capitol Hill … where the proud colors of the U.S.C.T. flew to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the fall & occupation of Richmond.

From Facebook; the complete post, which includes about 30 photographs, is here.

Tallahassee, FL Commemorates Civil War Emancipation, May 2017

Students from Bethel Christian Academy place carnations in front of the graves of  US Colored Troops soldiers who died during the Civil War. This was part of Tallahassee’s Florida Emancipation Day Celebration in May 2017.
Source: Tallahassee Democrat, photo by Ashley White

May 20, 2017, marked the 152nd anniversary of the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in Tallahassee, the capital of Florida. That date is observed as Emancipation Day in the state; Florida Emancipation Day is the equivalent of Juneteenth in Texas. The city of Tallahassee continued its tradition of commemorating Emancipation in Florida with a series of events and activities on May 19th and 20th, 2017.

African American Civil War Living Historians at Emancipation Day Activities in Tallahassee, FL in May 2017
Source: Tallahassee Democrat, photo by Ashley White

Here’s the history behind Florida Emancipation Day: on May 10, 1865, Union soldiers under the command of Brigadier General Edward McCook entered Tallahassee. This was weeks after April 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces in Virginia, and Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his forces in North Carolina. Successive waves of Confederate surrenders followed throughout the South. McCook and his men came to Tallahassee from Macon, Georgia, to facilitate the end of hostilities in the state and begin Union control. On May 20th, General McCook announced the Emancipation Proclamation in the city. Freedom in Florida was now “official.”

The Tallahassee Emancipation Day activities included a dramatic reading go the Emancipation Proclamation on the front steps of the historic Knott House Museum and the placement of carnations at the gravesite for African American Civil War soldiers.

A full write-up of the events is provided at the online site of the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper, including this video of the activities.

A participant sponsor in the activities was the 2nd Infantry Regiment United States Colored Troops Living History Association. It is always great to local area African Americans who are active in bringing the history to the people.

Poster for Emancipation Day events of the 2nd Infantry Regiment United States Colored Troops Living History Association.
Source: Riley Museum, Tallahassee, FL

Jefferson Davis, Mississippi, votes for Barack Obama

Election Results, 2012 Presidential Election, Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi
Image Source: Mississippi Presidential election results, 2012 Elections, NBC News.com; retrieved May 1, 2016

I rise… for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that… the State of Mississippi… has declared her separation from the United States. Under these circumstances, of course my functions are terminated here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, and I will say but very little more.

…I concur in the action of the people of Mississippi, believing it to be necessary and proper… (it is) a conviction of pressing necessity, it has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi into her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.

…the great principles… (of the Declaration of Independence have) no reference to the slave… When our Constitution was formed… we find provision made for that very class of persons (of the black race) as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men–not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three fifths.

– Jefferson Davis, Farewell Address to the US Senate, January 21, 1861

The forefathers of these (negroes)… were gathered from the torrid plains and malarial swamps of inhospitable Africa…. Generally they were born the slaves of barbarian masters, untaught in all the useful arts and occupations, reared in heathen darkness, and, sold by heathen masters, they were transferred to shores enlightened by the rays of Christianity.

There, put to servitude, they were trained in the gentle arts of peace and order and civilization; they increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers. Their servile instincts rendered them contented with their lot, and their patient toil blessed the land of their abode with unmeasured riches. Their strong local and personal attachment secured faithful service to those to whom their service or labor was due. A strong mutual affection was the natural result of this life-long relation, a feeling best if not only understood by those who have grown from childhood under its influence.

Never was there happier dependence of labor and capital on each other.

The tempter came, like the serpent in Eden, and decoyed them with the magic word of “freedom.”

– Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Chapter XXVI, published 1881, p 192

Jefferson Davis was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Prior to becoming the CSA’s president, he was a US Senator from the state of Mississippi. He resigned that position to join in Mississippi’s unilateral secession from the United States. Davis presided over the Confederacy’s unsuccessful Civil War with the United States, a war that eventually led to freedom for just under 4 million enslaved people. Over 436,000 of those enslaved people lived in his home state when the war began. Mississippi had the distinction of having the highest percentage of enslaved residents of any state; indeed, enslaved Africans were in the majority – 55% of the state’s population were enslaved people of African descent, while 45% of the population were free whites.

Davis did not take kindly to the United States’ emancipation policy. As noted in his post-war book The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, published in 1881, he believed that slavery represented a “happy dependence of labor and capital.” He especially condemned the Union policy of black military enlistment, which “put arms in (negro) hands, and trained their humble but emotional natures to deeds of violence and bloodshed, and sent them out to devastate their benefactors…” As far as Davis was concerned, the destruction of the “strong local and personal attachment” between master and slave was one of the worst outcomes of the war.

In honor of one of its favorite sons, Mississippi named a new county, formed in 1906,  after the CSA president. I don’t know if any black residents in the county or state had a say in that name, but my guess is, they had none. Jefferson Davis County is located in the south-central part of the state, about 40 miles from Hattiesburg, MS.   The county is not populous at all. It has a population of under 12,000, 60% of whom are African American.

Election Results, 2012 Presidential Election, Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi
Image Source: Mississippi Presidential election results, 2012 Elections, NBC News.com; retrieved May 1, 2016

In the 2012 presidential election, Jefferson Davis county voters were feeling blue: Barack Obama won the county in a landslide, beating Republican candidate Mitt Romney by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. But Romney prevailed statewide. He won the state of Mississippi by getting 54% of the vote, versus 44% for Obama.

One wonders: what would Jeff Davis think of the county which bears his name, in his home state, voting to elect a negro – a person of a race that was not “upon (the) footing of equality with white men” – to the office of president? In his grave, he might be thankful that he never lived to see the day.

And as an aside, I wonder how the people of the county feel about their county being named after a person who would have excoriated them for their choice of president.

BuzzFeed.com: “The Secret History Of The Photo At The Center Of The Black Confederate Myth”

Sergeant A.M. Chandler of the 44th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, Co. F., and Silas Chandler, family slave, with Bowie knives, revolvers, pepper-box, shotgun, and canteen; was Silas Chandler an enslaved camp servant, taking a photo amid movie studio props, or a bona fide black Confederate soldier?
Image Source: Library of Congress, Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-40073, also LC-DIG-ppmsca-40072

The website BuzzFeed.com has a great article about African Americans and the Civil War titled The Secret History Of The Photo At The Center Of The Black Confederate Myth. This is from the introduction to the article:

A 160-year-old tintype depicting Andrew Chandler and his slave Silas, both in Confederate uniform, has long been used as evidence that slaves willingly fought against the army that aimed to free them. Following the national backlash against Confederate iconography, Silas’s descendants seek to debunk this once and for all.

This is a powerful piece about how we, as families and communities, remember the past. It asks important questions, such as: can we ever really trust the family history that has been handed down to us, given that it might combine both fact and fancy? And also: after we die, who gets to tell the story of our life: our families, “interested” social organizations, or somebody else? Silas Chandler (see the above picture), the young, enslaved person who was a camp servant during the Civil War, would never have guessed that 150 years after the war’s end, his memory would be as contested as it is now.

FYI, I met with Bobbie Chandler (one of the great-grandchildren of Silas) a few years ago in Washington, DC. He was visiting the African American Civil War Museum. He and several family members were quite skeptical of the black Confederate soldier narrative that had been applied to their ancestor, and he was trying to find information about the subject. We now know that his skepticism was well founded.

His search for the truth was touching. He was clearly frustrated that so many people had told this story about his forefather, but now it seemed like that story could not be trusted. So he had to go on a quest, you could call it, to find the real past.

I know a lot of people think that the black Confederate “controversy” is overblown, and perhaps not worth the time it’s given in the media, or in social media. But it did matter to these descendants of Silas Chandler that they finally learned the truth about his life, and it matters to them that his life be correctly rendered wherever it is told. Ultimately, it is this concern about family and truth that drives the controversy, as much as anything.

RIP, Silas Chandler

Learning from Toy Soldiers

Michael Schaffner and Marquett Milton, two United States Colored Troops reenactors, use toy soldiers to discuss the formations used during the course of Civil War battles. Picture was taken at the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, DC.
Image Source: Ed Gasaway

The following images feature Michael Schaffner’s toy soldier collection, which depicts United States Colored Troops (African American Civil War soldiers). Schaffner has found them to be useful for teaching and training. For whatever reason, I find this to be cool; your mileage may vary. All images provided by Schaffner.

February 1: It’s National Freedom Day!

Freedom Day, performed by the Max Roach Combo. Max Roach, drums; Clifford Jordan, saxophone; Eddie Khan, bass; Coleridge Parkinson, piano; Abbey Lincoln, vocals. Circa 1960s. From the “Freedom Now Suite,” written by drummer Max Roach and writer-singer Oscar Brown Jr. An essay about the “Freedom Now Suite” is here. An alternate take is below.

Freedom Day lyrics

Whisper, listen, whisper, listen. Whispers say we’re free.
Rumors flyin’, must be lyin’. Can it really be?
Can’t conceive it, can’t believe it. But that’s what they say.
Slave no longer, slave no longer, this is Freedom Day.

Freedom Day, it’s Freedom Day. Throw those shacklin’ chains away.
Everybody that I see says it’s really true, we’re free.

Whisper, listen, whisper, listen. Whispers say we’re free.
Rumors flyin’, must be lyin’. Can it really be?
Can’t conceive it, don’t believe it. But that’s what they say.
Slave no longer, slave no longer, this is Freedom Day.

Freedom Day, it’s Freedom Day. Throw those shacklin’ chains away.
Everybody that I see says it’s really true, we’re free.

Freedom Day, it’s Freedom Day. Free to vote and earn my pay.
Dim my path and hide the way. But we’ve made it Freedom Day.

—

Considering the arc of American memory, why is it no surprise that few people have heard of National Freedom Day – a federal observance of the end of slavery in the United States?

But yes, there is a National Freedom Day. It commemorates the date (February 1, 1865) that Abraham Lincoln signed a joint resolution of the US Congress which proposed the 13th amendment to the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the United States. This amendment passed Congress after a very rancorous debate, as shown in the movie Lincoln. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states in December 1865. National Freedom Day was proclaimed a national day of observance by President Harry Truman in January 1949:

Whereas, near the end of the tragic conflict between the Northern and Southern States, the Congress adopted a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution which would outlaw slavery in the United States and in every place subject to its jurisdiction; and

Whereas the resolution was signed by President Lincoln on February 1, 1865, and thereafter led to the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the constitution; and

Whereas that Amendment is a corner stone in the foundation of our American traditions, and the signing of the resolution is a landmark in the Nation’s effort to fulfill the principles of freedom and justice proclaimed in the first ten amendments to the Constitution; and

Whereas, by a joint resolution approved June 30, 1948 (62 Stat. 1150), the Congress authorized the President to proclaim the first day of February of each year as National Freedom Day in commemoration of the signing of the resolution of February 1, 1865; and

Whereas the Government and people of the United States wholeheartedly support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948, which declares that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”:

Now, Therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate February 1, 1949, and each succeeding February 1, as national Freedom Day; and I call upon the people of the United States to pause on that day in solemn contemplation of the glorious blessings of freedom which we humbly and thankfully enjoy.

Image source: “A beacon to oppressed peoples everywhere”: Major Richard R. Wright Sr., National Freedom Day, and the Rhetoric of Freedom in the 1940s,”by Mitch Kachun. See also the Library of Congress’s America’s Story from America’s Library website.

New Orleans City Council votes to remove Confederate Monuments

From the Louisana Weekly online:

New Orleans City Council votes in favor of removing Confederate monuments

In a six-to-one vote on Dec. 17, New Orleans City Council decided to relocate four Confederate, reconstruction-era monuments. The four “nuisance” monuments—commemorating Robert E. Lee (Lee Circle), Jefferson Davis (Jeff Davis Parkway), P.G.T. Beauregard (outside City Park), and The Battle of Liberty Place (Iberville Street) — will soon be moved from their current positions of reverence into a city-owned warehouse and, eventually, to as-yet-undetermined public places of study.

The atmosphere in City Council chambers both before and after the public comments and the vote, was decidedly intense, with a third of the audience comprised of Black men and women old enough to have lived through legal lynching, segregation, and the tumultuous Civil Rights era. One man handed out t-shirts featuring a Black male urinating on a Confederate flag. A woman distributed “Kiss White Supremacy Goodbye” cookies.

The whole story is here.

My thoughts on where we should go in terms of dealing with these monuments is here: Going beyond the Confederate Flag Controversy: Missing Monuments – The Unfinished Work of Commemorating the African American Experience in the Civil War. From that post:

No state is more significant in the history of African American soldiery during Civil War than Louisiana. Louisiana provided more African American soldiers to the Union than any other state. Three of the first five black Union regiments were formed in the state. And finally, Louisiana probably produced the most black army officers of any state. A portion of these soldiers were free black Creoles, while others were former slaves. Many enlisted in the Louisiana Native Guards regiments that were organized in New Orleans.

Officers of Company C of the 1st Louisiana Native Guard at Fort Macomb, Louisiana, per Wikipedia
Image Source: Harpers Weekly, February 28, 1863, via Wikipedia

Yet, there is no monument or memorial to black soldiers in the city of New Orleans. Per my research, there is only one monument to black soldiers in the entire state — at Donaldsonville, Louisiana (which is between New Orleans and Baton Rouge).

This is an oversight that borders on being shameful. I hate to use such strong language. But it is past due that New Orleans and other places in the state recognize the pivotal role these soldiers played during the Civil War.

Mississippi Blue Flood Blues

The Colored Soldier, Marching into Dixie; 1863; hand-colored lithograph; from New York: Published by Currier & Ives, New York; Originally part of a McAllister, Hart, Phillips Civil War scrapbook
Description: Portrait of an earnest African American Union soldier dressed in his blue uniform, a “U.S.” belt buckle, and a cap. He holds his rifle over his shoulder and carries a sleeping mat on his back.
Image and Description Source: Library Company of  Philadelphia, African Americana Collection – African American Graphics Collection; see here for Library Company of Philadelphia’s homepage.

The Mississippi Blue Flood Blues
By Alan Skerrett

There’s a blue flood in Mississippi
That’s where my baby be
There’s a blue flood in Mississippi
That’s where my baby be
They’re wearin’ eagles on their buttons [1]
Tellin’ us it’s Jubilee [2]

There’s a dark cloud over Vicksburg [3]
I hope my baby found a cave
There’s a dark cloud over Vicksburg
Sure hope my baby’s in a cave
But that blue flood is surely coming’
And I know my baby will be saved

There’s thunder and lighting in Natchez
Where there used to be crying on the block [4]
There’s thunder and lighting in Natchez
Where my baby was crying on the block
But when that blue flood comes to Natchez
We’ll take the keys and break the locks

There’s a horn blown’ in Jackson [5]
Blowing just like Jericho
Lord, there’s a horn blowin’ in Jackson
Strong and loud like Jericho
When you hear that horn a wailing,
Pack your bags, child, time to go!
—————

[1] African Americans soldiers were a vital part of the Union forces in the Mississippi Valley. Almost 18,000 black men from Mississippi enlisted in the Union army; only Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee provided more African descent troops to the Union cause. During the war, Frederick Douglass famously said “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.” Earnest McBride, in his essay “Black Mississippi troops in the Civil War,” writes that “the most noteworthy battles fought by Mississippi black troops to liberate themselves, their families and the entire nation are the Battle of Milliken’s Bend, June 7, 1863, as part of the Vicksburg Campaign; two battles in or near Yazoo City, February and March, 1864; Big Black and Concord Church, Nov. 23-Dec. 4, 1864; Brownsville, MS, April, 1864; Brice’s Crossroads, June 1-13, 1864; Tupelo, July 5-1864.”