Beyond the nuance of the "Emancipation Memorial," which is well told here by @rmbryer, is the larger story of Lincoln Park in the years that followed. 1/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/25/yes-dcs-emancipation-memorial-advances-white-supremacy/

As there will be much discussion tonight and beyond of the Lincoln statue and the racial hierarchy it depicts, I hope that the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial across the park won't be forgotten. (My photo). 2/

@JennyWoodley writes about the Bethune Memorial well in her 2017 "Journal of American Studies" article. Bethune's was the first monument depicting a Black subject on federal property in the capital, and likewise the first to depict a woman. 3/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/ma-is-in-the-park-memory-identity-and-the-bethune-memorial/6BDE2A6A9D4686E59B14E81DE1754A2F

Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women and was a member of FDR's black cabinet, among a long list of accomplishments. Her monument, as an early 70s fundraising appeal explained, was to mark the centennial of the emancipation that Lincoln's statue commemorated. 4/

"It was conceived as a living tribute to Mary McLeod Bethune, who was born one year before the dedication of the Lincoln statue (1875) and who epitomized the black man's quest for dignity and justice." 5/

But the Bethune Memorial was part of a much bigger project for the park, one that sought to reimagine it as a place between white and Black DC and to make it into a lively community space. 6/

Robert Berks sculpted the monument; a white artist, he also made the JFK bust in the @kencen. Both bear the trademark texture of his work. But the architects for the project were Black: David Byrd, and then the most eminent Black architect in DC, Hilyard Robinson. 7/

Then, in the last stages of the project, the architectural aspect of the statue was completed by Bond Ryder, the firm of J. Max Bond, Jr. (who was present at the dedication of the Bethune Memorial in 1974). 8/

Part of the project was to reframe the Lincoln statue. Through urban design and sculptural gestures, Bethune changes the meaning of Lincoln. The architects flipped Lincoln around, so he faced Bethune across the plaza, not the U.S. Capitol. 9/

Lincoln's statue is formal & hierarchical. It uses the language of the typical monument, a high neoclassical pedestal. Bethune's memorial is open & accessible. She hands her legacy to two young Black children--the future. She stands upon a broad, white modernist base. 10/

The 3 figures in Bethune's memorial are nearly human scale. They stand on a single plane. While Bethune is at the lower level of the court, the pedestal puts her at the level of the ground of the Lincoln statue. All line up w/ the Capitol but Bethune, not Lincoln, faces it. 11/

The area around Bethune includes benches and, perhaps most importantly, two playgrounds that were part of the park redesign and emphasize this end as the neighborhood's. 12/

The conversation around the Emancipation Memorial is essential. I don't know what will happen tonight, or tomorrow. Removal is a much more direct way to undermine its intrinsic white supremacy than any recontextualization ever could accomplish. 13/

But I do hope Bethune isn't lost in this story. Hers is one of my favorite monuments in Washington, an accessible & modern rejection of the city's tradition of heroic, pretentious monuments, and a significant 1st that celebrated Black women in a city dominated by white men. end/