This is not a normal GetReligion post. Then again, these are not normal times in American life.
Ponder this journalism question. Let’s say that alt-right leaders made a public announcement that they were — in two days — going to gather to attack, desecrate and topple a memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. How much news coverage would that story receive? How about a right-wing attack on a statue of President Abraham Lincoln?
That brings us to the status of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.
What is missing from the following material in a Washington Post story about a number of events unfolding in the nation’s capital?
Other protesters gathered on Capitol Hill’s Lincoln Park, home to another controversial statue. Protesters decried the Emancipation Memorial, which depicts a freed slave kneeling at the feet of President Abraham Lincoln.
Earlier in the day, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) introduced a bill to have the statue removed, saying it did not reflect the efforts African Americans made to free themselves from slavery.
Now, click here and watch the video at the top of this post, which contains a specific threat made against this memorial.
Is that threat worthy of coverage?
Of course, it also helps to know something about the history of this particular memorial — which was created with funds donated by freed slaves.
While critics claim that the statue depicts a white man towering over a subservient black man, that is not what it mean to the former slaves who created it. They knew the story behind the image. Here is a short piece of a WBUR report in Boston:
The memorial … depicts Abraham Lincoln standing over a kneeling slave beckoning him to rise to claim his freedom.
If you look up that event in history books, Lincoln is quoted as telling the slave: “Do not kneel to me; from now on, you kneel only to your God” (or variations on that thought).
So here is my request to GetReligion readers: Help me look for balanced, accurate elite media coverage — in the next 24 hours or so — of debates about the history and symbolism of the Emancipation Memorial.
In particular, please look for quotations from the speech during the April 14, 1876, dedication rites by the American hero Frederick Douglass.
Trust me: There are plenty of passages worthy of quoting in newspapers, in the context of recent headlines. Like this one:
We stand today at the national center to perform something like a national act — an act which is to go into history; and we are here where every pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt, and reciprocated. A thousand wires, fed with thought and winged with lightning, put us in instantaneous communication with the loyal and true men all over the country.
Few facts could better illustrate the vast and wonderful change which has taken place in our condition as a people than the fact of our assembling here for the purpose we have today. Harmless, beautiful, proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that no such demonstration would have been tolerated here twenty years ago. The spirit of slavery and barbarism, which still lingers to blight and destroy in some dark and distant parts of our country, would have made our assembling here the signal and excuse for opening upon us all the flood-gates of wrath and violence. That we are here in peace today is a compliment and a credit to American civilization, and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future. I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice; but simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow-citizens and ourselves, and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then; the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races — white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour.
Or how about this idea: Maybe the New York Times editors could run the entire speech as an op-ed page essay?
Who could object to words such as these, from one of the great black religious and political leaders in American history? Here is more from Douglass, at that dedication rite:
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defense of the Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation, which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while the Republic lives.
For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the Republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment of the country; in the presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of aftercoming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.
Stay tuned.