Thousands Call For The Removal Of A Statue Of Abraham Lincoln With 'Degrading Racial Undertones'

[raging moderate]

33. I read a book once by an anti-slavery minister.

Last edited Mon Jun 22, 2020, 12:33 PM - Edit history (1)

He said he had become an abolitionist because of a trip he took down South as a young minister. It was supposed to be a simple get-to-know-you tour of fellow ministers and church members in the South. Maybe they were hoping to hire him, who knows? They had written that he would gain weight with lots of wonderful Southern-cooked meals. He wrote that he actually lost weight, that he could hardly stand to swallow the food, because he was constantly stricken by heart-pounding and stomach-wrenching pity for the horrible physical condition of the people waiting on them at table. And the same was true of almost all the other Black people he saw down there. He was also shocked by how oblivious his white hosts were to the agony surrounding them. He finished the tour but came home as quickly as he could and promptly launched a tour of Northern churches to spread the news and do whatever he could to rescue those Black people and end slavery.

This guy mentioned that the prosperity of the South seemed to limited to only a small number of whites, and that he saw a large number of poor whites who looked underfed, overworked, and hopeless. But the Black slaves were not only underfed, overworked, and hopeless, but also in pain from recent tortures, physically disfigured by huge scars both old and new, and obviously pushing themselves heroically through a never-ending nightmare ordeal. I am wondering whether this statue was trying to convey how miserable conditions were for most Black people in the South before slavery was ended? Frederick Douglass spoke of Abraham Lincoln's struggle to work through his early poverty-stricken rural isolation from and ignorance about Black people, wrestling with a lifelong hatred of slavery versus his desire to help people from his own very poor rural white community, finally realizing that he could help both groups by abolishing slavery. Maybe this statue could be altered to both express and encourage the insights that are available to us now?