Plans taking shape for slave emancipation monument on Brown's Island

Jay Warren
The planned Emancipation Proclamation monument will feature a male figure bearing scars on his back, with arms outstretched as his shackles fall away.

Scars showing on his back, the figure stands with arms outstretched as his shackles fall away.

For now, the image of the emancipated slave exists as a small-scale model in the workshop of a sculptor in Oregon. But over the next few years, if all goes to plan, the statue will stand 12 feet tall at a prominent spot on Brown's Island, which was home to many free blacks after the fall of Confederate Richmond and the end of the Civil War.

The $800,000 monument - being planned by a state commission as part of Virginia's efforts to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation - also features a female figure cradling a baby in one arm. In her right hand, she holds high a document inscribed with the date of Abraham Lincoln's 1863 order that declared slaves free in rebel states such as Virginia.

The state's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commission expects the bronze monument to be in place by the fall of 2019 at the latest, when Virginia will mark the 400th anniversary of four seminal events at Jamestown, one being the arrival of the first Africans in North America.

Read more: http://www.richmond.com/news/local/city-of-richmond/article_61ed091e-19f0-5126-8b6c-0ccdaaa3893d.html

Cross-posted in the Virginia Group.