ABRAHAM LINCOLN 2020 (Video)

By: Joseph Evans, Ph.D.

Changing Our Narrative

It must be admitted, truth compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interest, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.  He was pre-eminently the white man’s President entirely devoted to the welfare of the white man.  He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of white people of this country. Frederick Douglass 1876

Frederick Douglass is well known for his iconic address “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”  He used his address to prophesy against the dangers of the slave institution. Certainly, it was dangerous to the development of the psyche and character of the American republic. Slavery was an eminent danger because it denied justice to the oppressed and to deny justice to some means a denial of democracy to all. Douglass prophesied this eminent danger to an elite audience that was assembled in Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. On this historic occasion, Douglass appealed to his audience to acknowledge America’s patriotic hypocrisy (July 5, 1852).  

Indeed Douglass’s address was bold and consequential and it helped to shape the ethical and moral arc of America’s democratic future.  What is more, he understood that racially biased patriotism whether patriotic observances and for that matter, erecting bronze sculptors, symbolize American myths and folklore that sanitize the brutalities and accuracies of history. Douglass’s courage to speak would seem to place him on a providential trajectory to cross paths with America’s most notable leaders. Later Douglass would develop a relationship with the fourteenth president of the United States Abraham Lincoln.  Because of his relationship and reputation as a key figure, advocate and agitator for the abolishment of slavery; Douglass was chosen to address the crowd assembled to dedicate what is known as the Freedom Memorial.   From what is written here, the expectation is that readers will see Abraham Lincoln 2020.  

On that spring day (April 14), in 1876, Frederick Douglass gave the keynote address during the dedicatory celebration of the newly erected Freedom Memorial. Among the attendees was President Ulysses S. Grant. The president did not speak that day but had the honor of unveiling the statue of Lincoln standing paternalistically over a kneeling emancipated slave. The memorial is displayed in the middle of Lincoln Park, on East Capitol Street, in Washington, DC. The Capitol Hill Street wraps itself around snobbish but beautiful architecture, the handsome sandstone townhouses, the park and the memorial. At the time, famously, Douglass was known as a respected orator and abolitionist. 

Although Douglass met Lincoln in 1863 and became acquainted well with the honoree of the memorial, still it is difficult to conceive that Douglass was asked to deliver this historic address among the assembled people; people who came to be self-congratulated. They believed themselves to be black folk’s emancipators and benefactors. During the dedication, the benefactors expected black folks to appear thankful. “The high officials may have smiled and felt their chest swell at the former slaves patriotic language” (David Blight in Fredrick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, 5). Assembled elites wanted to be associated in history with Mr. Lincoln. 

One sure way to accomplish this was to be known as black folk’s allies. In short and somewhat, they were on the right side of history.  In short and somewhat, this is an example of white paternalism, supremacy and hegemony – even from the right-siders.  

On that day, it was Douglass’s herculean assignment to both “praise and blame” the beloved martyred president. David Blight shares how Douglass summarized Lincoln’s presidency and samples of Douglass rhetoric used that day: 

Douglass employed a stunning level of directness for such a ceremonial occasion. He did not merely turn his moment in the national sun into a reminiscence about a good war and glorious outcomes. Lincoln’s growth to greatness and to the role of Emancipator, he insisted, must first be seen through the disappointments of his first year in office.  Douglass would not consider the triumphal memory of 1865 without first pulling his audience through the pain of 1861.  During the secession crisis and into 1862, he remembered, Lincoln had promised to support all constitutional protections of slavery in the Southern states.  He “was willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his master,” a position Douglass had utterly condemned during the crisis. The former abolitionist forgot nothing of Lincoln’s record on race and slavery, especially the episode in 1862 when in a meeting with five black ministers at the White House, the president “strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born,’ or when “he told us he would save the Union with slavery” and “refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored soldiers.” Lincoln’s sins against the cause of abolition was long and ugly, especially for this celebratory moment. But Douglass rejected empty politeness (Blight, Frederick Douglass, 6).  

Blight has shaped a narrative that describes Douglass’s true grit and how the orator possessed unwavering courage.  Douglass, a former slave, stood before the Washington elite like the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah who was recorded to say:

Behold, I have put my words in your mouth…

to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, 

to build and to plant (Jeremiah 1:9-10).

Of import, Blight’s Douglass narrative is historically accurate.  Blight explains that like the biblical Jeremiah, Douglass too filled the shoes of a prophet. Douglass the prophet was called to speak truth to power and to speak truth against power.  Truth telling then is a democratic act. What is more; prophets understand the power of symbols which are twofold here: First, the Freedom Memorial was the sculptor Thomas Ball’s art of folklore. Art as folklore here reinforces white mythology (which includes white paternalism, supremacy and hegemony). 

Ball’s white mythology was meant to remove any stains that may have been attached to the historical Lincoln.  On the other hand, Douglass understood the sculptor’s white mythology strategy that lies underneath the memorial’s symbolism. It was incumbent that the prophet tells the truth about Lincoln.  The truth is that Lincoln deliberately chose to protect slavery. It was the cost and sacrifice he would accept to preserve the Union. However for Lincoln and his effort to save the Union, it became inevitable that he acknowledge the American Civil War was about the abolishment of the institution of slavery.  Douglass then courageously and deliberately warns against the growing Lincoln mythology.  The statue added to the Lincoln lie and therefore; Douglass upsets the equilibrium and status-quo. That is, its willfulness to sanitize intentionally the flawed character and humanity of Lincoln. Thus, in this way, Douglass demystified Lincoln, white mythology, paternalism, supremacy and hegemony. 

For a lack of another expression, this writing appears on page and in earnest it is a way to address current debates and discussions that involve American statutes (this includes white paternalism, supremacy, memorials, monuments and flags). We have noticed that many are coming down across our fruited plains – even in the Magnolia state of Mississippi. Peculiarly, this may be an appropriate way to address what lies underneath the toppled statues. Let us remember that these statues are meant to communicate a powerful symbol. Symbols point to something beyond words but in fact; a statute is a word picture that unlooses the character from history’s accuracies and represents something nostalgic or even romantic. 

What is more, the symbols which are underneath these toppled marble things underline this present moment in the nation’s history.  It seems clear – at least to me that statues in general and those of particular interest to me of well-known and lesser – known figures are heroes to some and villains to others.  All point toward in greater and lesser degrees something vastly more sinister than the statues themselves. That sinister something has been always white mythology.  

White mythology is as old as the Greek Revival in this country. It is the sanitation – the whitening of that which has been stained.  These statutes crafted and erected to the memory of these historic personalities are meant to disinfect the air from the stench of history’s accuracies.  It is folklore, a way of retelling and revising historical accounts through sheer romanticization of the historical events. The objective is to recast events, making the events fact less and more tolerable. Toleration is nothing more than an attempt to reduce the factual damage done by paternalistic heroes and heroines. 

This is what Greek gods and goddesses personify – white mythology. White mythology then took root in the psyche fabric of this nation, due in- large part, to the role played by Edward Everett, a president of Harvard University: 

[Edward] Everett played a key role in America’s Greek Revival. Harvard established its new chair in ancient Greek studies for him. He had sped through Harvard at the top of his class, completed his divinity studies, and been appointed to the prestigious Brattle Street pulpit before he was twenty.  His promise as a scholar made Harvard call him back from the pulpit to the classroom.  But first the university subsidized his studies in Germany, where he was the first American to earn his doctorate at the center of new philology (in 1817, from Gottingen).  While Everett was abroad, he traveled widely and met the leaders of the romantic age, from Goethe to Byron. He went to Greece, to walk over the battle fields where the first democracy of the West won its freedom. He returned to America convinced that a new Athens was rising here (See Gary Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, 43-44). 

White mythology is Greek in origin; Eurocentric in form; it is romanticized by the Germans; and it is Anglophile in nature.  In every way, it reinforces if not creates a mythical cult-like worldview.  In America, white mythology – or statues of American heroes and heroines are crafted to purge and whitewash Eurocentric and Anglophile values, traditions of its missteps by focusing only on its folklores.    

Nearly every statue in America reinforces this white mythical romanticism of heroics that inspired the first Greek revival in the first instance and the inspiration that brought the second Greek Revival mythology to America.  However it is restated emphatically that the Greek Revival was and is Eurocentric and Anglophile in its form, function, nature and aesthetic.  It is the aesthetic that should alarm you; aesthetic here is summarized as form over function. Aesthetics sets the standard of beauty or better yet, it reshapes and reorients popular public opinion around the historicity of past events and replaces history’s accuracies with myth and romanticism.  Thus it is romanticism that is captured in the chiseled statues by cunning hands of the crafts -persons.  There have been countless cunning hands that have crafted heroic figures that many consider a villain.  Robert E. Lee is an immediate example. 

The horrors of Charlottesville cannot be described in any other way. Perhaps we can add the word tragedy (2017).  On that fatal day in Charlottesville, there were two opposing forces present.  One was the resistors to white supremacy and another were resistors to black lives matter protests. It was like a Civil War battle. The opposing forces mustered in formations in Charlottesville. They mustered over interpretation. They mustered over 21st century aesthetic form over function.  Some mustered to protest the ugly white mythology that surrounds Robert E. Lee. Some mustered to protect it at all cost.   

Prior to the Charlottesville massacre, neither of these opposing forces or movements was brought into the mainstream’s living rooms during primetime.  Minimal attention was paid to the growing movements by telecasts of local or national news or even cable punditry.  All made us aware in its aftermath. The horror however became an international story. It was on television across the pond the very day, hour, minute and second that it occurred in real time.  Alongside others, I witnessed the embarrassing and horrific event that happened in Charlottesville near Cambridge University’s King’s College, while eating fish and chips. 

If journalists had brought related stories that led to the Charlottesville massacre, all would have known these statues and those like it reveal the rise of white nationalism. Propagandists like Paula White, Rod Parsley, and Pat Robertson’s religion which is thinly veiled fascism, created lust for White nationalism. Their propaganda is associated with sustaining white mythology.  Careful journalists would have reported that the American Greek Revival lay at the taproot of white mythology.  Keep in mind, the two opposing forces that mustered at Charlottesville formed as protagonists and antagonists of white mythology. 

The antagonists in this instance, celebrate white supremacy by romanticizing memories of its past. The protagonists in this instance are willing to deconstruct these ghastly romantics. The latter understands that removing statues that are dedicated to the failed cause statuesque figures is dedicated to exposing its antagonist’s lustful original sin. There are many who believe, American’s original sin is slavery and perhaps.  America’s original sin is nothing less than causing and maintaining black trauma (1619 – present). 

When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and vigorously pressed by him, we saw the hand writing of the ages, in form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rages of bondage… 

Again, Frederick Douglass did not romanticize white mythology– even the mythology of the life and times of Mr. Lincoln.  As previously mentioned, Douglass was the keynote speaker at a dedicatory ceremony that was meant to honor the memory of Lincoln.  Indeed Douglass met the occasion as no other orator could.  Indeed, there was no orator who could have been rightly in his place.  He was the master of eloquence; he had given his life to the abolition of America’s “peculiar institution.” Douglass had experienced the whip, lash and bleeding gash that cut into the flesh of his body. The bloodstains and scares never heal physically completely and never heals completely emotionally (“From now on” [Apostle Paul said], “let no one cause me trouble for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17).  

Like Apostle Paul and Frederick Douglass, infinite numbers of black folks have experienced the whip, lash and gash. None have and neither will heal physically completely until the trauma stops. We continue to lag behind all other people groups in every measurable and meaningful statistic that matters in this nation. Because of the whip, lash, and gash, black folks have not and neither will heal emotionally completely and will not until the trauma stops. And the trauma will not stop without the completion of reconstruction which is economic reparations. The mark of slavery continues to haunt black men and women. We turn somersaults to survive. We jostle with laws and the manipulated application of these laws that impede our efforts economically. We continue to suffer socially, physically, psychologically and spiritually. We do this in a nation where our slave ancestors and ancestresses built its infrastructures including the nation’s capital building and yes – the White House.  

Across the country, statues are toppled by people who understand the symbols. The symbols point to white mythology which reinforces paternalism, supremacy and hegemony and the like. That is what the Freedom Memorial represents in Lincoln Park in the nation’s capital. Douglass made clear to his audience of right-siders that Lincoln standing paternalistically over this docile former slave misrepresents Lincoln and the righteous indignation of black people.  Douglass reminded the right-siders that slaves ran from plantations and fought for their own freedom.  While slaves, bondsmen and women created their own environment that brought self – emancipation.     

In fact the greatest orator of the 19^th century was a former slave – a runaway slave, who taught himself to read and write.  Douglass knew Lincoln and Lincoln knew Douglass.  So he eulogized Lincoln and did not reinforce his mythology. Instead he described a flawed man. Douglass deconstructed Lincoln in order to deconstruct white mythology.  Like Douglass, we must deconstruct white mythology too and its superiority conspiracies. It begins in public parks where statues are used to reinforce white superiority mythology.  Even an Abraham Lincoln statute that depicts him standing paternalistically above a black man in the 21^st century is unpleasant at best and horrible at worst.  Because of its imagery; its symbolism has herculean powerful. It adds to Lincoln’s mythological powerful. The 1876 audience must have known it was wrong to erect such a memorial right? It should have right? We should have known that too right?  Frederick Douglass did. 

Because Douglas understood the growing Lincoln mythology, now we see Abraham Lincoln 2020.