Liberty Enlightening the World (1886- ), better known since 1924 as the Statue of Liberty, also called Lady Liberty, is a huge green statue of Libertas, a Roman goddess, that stands in New York harbour. With chains of slavery and tyranny broken at her feet, she holds up a torch lighting the way to liberty.
- Location: 40.689 N, 74.044 W, on Liberty Island (formerly known as Bedloe’s Island), 1 km south of Ellis Island.
- Orientation: faces south-east
- Height: 46 metres (151 foot 1); with the pedestal, 93 metres (305 feet).
- Shoe size: 879 (US)
- Colour: copper, started turning green in 1900, mostly green by the 1930s, all green by the 1960s.
- Inspired by:
- the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and
- the freeing of US slaves.
- Visitors: 4 million a year
The electrically-lit torch used to be a wonder, but now we take it for granted.
The statue is designed to last a thousand years, though in Hollywood films it is a favoured target for apocalyptic destruction.
It was the brainchild of Édouard René de Laboulaye, president of the French Anti-Slavery Society. It was designed by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and French engineer Gustave Eiffel, later famous for the Eiffel Tower.
It was a gift from France to the US for its 100th birthday, but by 1876 only the right hand and the torch were ready (pictured below).
The statue stood for the friendship between France and US and the triumph of their shared Enlightenment values of freedom and democracy over slavery.
Was Lady Liberty supposed to be Black? According to the National Parks Service, Bartholdi used drawings of Egyptian women at first but in the end put his mother’s face on the statue. There is no evidence anyone asked him to make Lady Liberty White.
“The New Colossus” (1883) is a poem about the statue written by Emma Lazarus to raise money for the pedestal on which it stands. She was a champion for Jews in New York who had fled anti-Semitic violence and persecution in Russia.
From the poem:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Among the wretched refuse were Frank Capra, Irving Berlin, Ayn Rand, Max Factor, Al Jolson, Cary Grant, Rudolph Valentino, Elia Kazan, Isaac Asimov, Claude McKay, along with the families of Colin Powell, Bruce Springsteen, Martin Scorsese, Cicely Tyson, Martha Stewart, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – and the ancestors of 40% of US citizens. They all sailed past the Statue of Liberty on their way to Ellis Island to gain entry into the US.
The poem is not inscribed into the base of the statue and did not appear on the plaque inside till 1903. Even then it did not become the “meaning” of the statue till pro-immigration activists pushed for it in the 1930s.
Richard Spencer, alt-right defender of Confederate statues, commenting on Lazarus’ poem:
“It’s offensive that such a beautiful, inspiring statue was ever associated with ugliness, weakness, and deformity.”
– Abagond, 2018.
See also:
- US monuments
- Third Enlargement of Whiteness
- alt-right
- Richard Spencer
- Charlottesville riot
- “shithole countries”
- deportation raid
- New York
- models of US society
- pathogenic (nativist)
- cosmopolitan
- three pillars
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Richard Spencer is ugly, weak, and deformed. He’s an abomination.
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With the President making disparaging remarks about Haitians and Africans and El Salvadorans being from sh*t hole countries. And the recipients of DACA being threatened with deportation and now there are reports of the Government shutting down and the visitation to The Statue Of Liberty being closed down to tourists. The United States government is a huge dumpster fire. The Statue Of Liberty was a symbol of welcoming those very immigrants to America to seek a better life. Now under this new administration America is a hateful place due to the xenophobic rhetoric of the evil despot and his white supremacist regime. Our democracy and constitutional rights are eroding. I am frightened of what this country is turning into.
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@ Mary
That is why I did this post now – Trump’s fecal rhetoric, the government shutdown over DACA, shutting down the Statue of Liberty itself (though Governor Cuomo reopened it Monday morning with state money – the Statue of Liberty is hugely profitable).
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The white poet emma lazarus was persuaded to write ‘The New Colossus’ by her former-slave-owning friend constance cary harrison, one of the women who designed the confederate flag. Calling herself a ‘refugee’ of the fallen Richmond, harrison moved to New York, a confederate friendly city, after the amerikkkan civil war and used the struggle of white european Jews as a weapon against the first wave of Black southern emigrants of the pogroms that would become known as The Great Migration. A young theodore roosevelt helped with the fundraising and, when he grew up, as president he appointed one of harrison’s sons as a colonial governor overseeing the genocide in the Philippines.
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Mary,
Be vigilant, stay aware, challenge, but don’t be frightened. As long as the concept, “Progress & Retrenchment” applies; this is what change looks like.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand.” -Frederick Douglass
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@PF Thought: Your post is food for thought I am vigilant and aware and I believe in resistance and challenge our very lives depend on those things. And if we who are disaffected with this current administration we will have to get out and go to the polls in large numbers just like we did with Obama.
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Now I will also challenge you to not be consumed by it (even when resisting).
Yes you are correct about taking political action. Though the everyday actions (individually, socially) may be presently, more important.
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