BU Humanities Graduate Intern Report Impacts Boston Removal of Emancipation Statue
On June 30, 2020, the Boston Arts Commission (BAC) voted to remove The Emancipation Group statute from its prominent position in Boston’s Park Square. Unlike the US National Park Service that is struggling to protect the Emancipation Monument, a replica of the Boston statue in Washington, DC’s Lincoln Park, the City of Boston has heeded public condemnation of both works’ celebratory depiction of white mastery and Black servility. Whereas the statues depict Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator benevolently bestowing liberty to a kneelingly-shackled slave, the real life model for both statues, Archer Alexander, actively engineered his un-enslavement by not only providing actionable military intelligence to the US Army against the Confederacy during the US Civil War, but also outfoxing slave catchers on his way to a life of freedom in Missouri. By seeking to re-position the statue to a place where it can be viewed in an appropriately historical context, the decision of the BOA reflects current scholarship—and the truth of Alexander’s life—that far from being passive beneficiaries of emancipation, the enslaved, both prior to and during the Civil War, were active architects of their freedom.
In this measure, the City of Boston has in no small part been guided by a report produced by BU History of Art & Architecture PhD Candidate Ewa Matcyczyk during her service as 2018 PhD Humanities Summer Intern at the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture: “An Opportunity for Change.” According to Matcyczyk, the report committed Boston to “examine the city’s public art collection from a perspective informed by the national conversation surrounding monuments, equity, race, and public space.” By decentering the statue to a context more appropriate for such good faith conversations, Boston has taken a step in the journey toward racial equity in our public spaces and our historical memory. The Humanities Center and the Office of the Associate Provost for Graduate Affairs, cosponsors of the internship program, are pleased to acknowledge the real-life impact of the humanities at BU in the form of the role played by Matcyczyk’s report in this event.