Archer can still be seen today, rising from his knees, his shackles broken, looking up towards Lincoln. Archer Alexander is no longer just a local boy, as he rises next to Lincoln on the Emancipation Memorial today, in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.. Please sign the Petition to save the monument .
Author: Dorris Keeven-Franke
Public Historian aka Storyteller, I like to share the stories of people and places and help others reconnect to their own past.
Save the Emancipation Memorial in DC
It is said that those that do not know their history, are doomed to repeat it. Let us all rise up, by learning the truth of our history. Our ancestors, fought side by side to put an end to slavery. There are those of us that are willing to stand side by side, to once again raise our voices and take a risk for something we all believe in.
The Emancipation Monument
In Lincoln Park, in Washington, D.C. sits the Emancipation monument.Freedom Memorial with Abraham Lincoln and Archer Alexander.
Keep the Emancipation Memorial Statue
Who was Keith Winstead’s ancestor Archer Alexander? In 1863, he was a man who chose to do the right thing. When he overheard his master plotting to sabotage the local railroad bridge, he risked being lynched and reported it. He fled from St Charles County to St. Louis, where he was taken into the home of Eliot, who worked to see Archey emancipated. Eliot wrote “His freedom came directly from the hand of President Lincoln”. When Archey saw a picture of the final monument his words were “Now I’se free.”*
Eyes of the Time
It would take years, but in 1876, with the help of the Western Sanitary Commission, that monument would become a reality. That simple bronze monument, with two figures, a tall white man, and a black man rising on one knee, alongside him. The first ever to include a black person in our Nation’s Capital.
Black Lives Matter
Take a closer look please, as Archer’s shackles have been broken and he is rising to stand next to Lincoln.
Boston’s Emancipation Memorial
Boston’s copy was placed there as a tribute to the people of Boston who were the nation’s largest contributors to the Western Sanitary Commission. That is what people of America saw when they visited your statue in the 1870s.
March 30, 1863
Originally posted on Dorris Keeven Franke:
I thought I was familiar with the story of Archer Alexander, the slave that portrays the gratitude the African Americans felt…
Looking for descendants
In 1829, a small group of four families, Campbell, McCluer, Wilson and Alexander, all wealthy and well educated . planters from Virginia, came with their enslaved, about…… Read more “Looking for descendants”
St. Louis
When Lincoln, a personal friend to Eliot, was assassinated, the formerly enslaved wanted a monument to Lincoln, and St. Louis’ former slave, Archer Alexander would be the one, to represent them, rising up and as Eliot says “breaking his own chains”.
