| "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore."-
Emma Lazaruus |
In regards to artist David Kam's "4 Liberties" paintings (Red Liberty, White Liberty, Yellow Liberty, and Black Liberty),
Kam say's "my idea is to bring back the original intent of the Statue of Liberty, which
is to celebrate freedom from interracial prejudice, as well as still embracing it
as a universal symbol of freedom, and democracy".
The statue's original intent was to celebrate the end of slavery. The construction of Lady Liberty was initially inspired by French abolitionists with the intention of saluting Lincoln and the emancipation of the slaves. In 1886 the Statue of Liberty was erected as a symbol of American generosity towards a hungry and
un-free world. The liberation of over 4 million people from slavery in 1865 can be viewed as the second American social transformation, since America's independence from Britain.
Bartholdi attempted to make this evident in the name he gave his
statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World," and in its design. The
statue's upraised arm held high the symbolic torch of freedom; at her
feet lay the broken chain of tyranny. On her left arm rested a tablet
inscribed with the date of the American Declaration of Independence,
reminding everyone of its bold proclamation about the "inalienable
rights" of all men to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
At the turn of the century the statue symbolized freedom for immigrants who passed through New York Harbor. Today it is one of the most universal symbols of political freedom and democracy.
The original meaning of the Statue of Liberty was corrupted by the deeply rooted racist ideology of American political, and intellectual leadership of that time. The new meaning was redirected by the politics of "race" towards the white "huddled masses" of Europe.
Interracial prejudice, with its primary victims being Catholic, Blacks, Jews, and Asians were still widespread during the late 19th century. "White supremacy" and terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (1868) emerged and like their predecessors, the No Nothing party of the 1840s, included Catholics and Jews in their litany of hate and murder in addition to African Americans.
The Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, transformed America in a short 35 years from a rural agrarian economy to an industrial-based urban economy. Industrial capitalism created unimaginable opportunities for a flood of new European immigrants. The presence of black people and their ongoing struggle for democracy was suffocated by the new hordes of people from Europe.
In an 1890, Bartholdi - the statue's sculptor, in a interview he granted to
the Paris correspondent of the New York World, Bartholdi lamented
that Americans neither appreciated the uniqueness of their people nor
his statue's potential for symbolizing it.
He stated, "In Liberty
Island. . . [he insisted on calling it that at a time when everyone else
still referred to it as Bedloe's Island] the Americans have a spot
unique in the world for the home of a temple to the glorification of
their wonderful nationality and the idealization of the strong poetry of
their race . . . in the cohesion into one mighty mass of elements so
widely diverse." Bartholdi was correct in observing that most Americans
initially failed to associate the statue with immigration and an appreciation of
our multi-ethnic heritage.
Race and color was, and is still now the key to undeserved advantages in
America. African Americans, then as now, remain a permanent minority - politically, psychologically, and numerically. Until prejudice according to race and color is stamped out, the original meaning of the Statue of Liberty will never be
fully realized.
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