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Lady Liberty - You know it well. With its regal crown and brilliant torch, the 305-foot monument in New York Harbor is largely celebrated as a phase of freedom for all. But the initial goal of the statue is actually more pointed than whatYou have been taught at school. While you may have thought that it was created to accommodate immigrants in America,The statue of liberty has been designed to commemorate the end of slavery.

The monument was imagined by the French author and the anti-slavery activistÉdouard René de Laboulay, who was president of the French emancipation committee who raised funds for newly released slaves in the United States. In 1865 he organized a group of French abolitionists to discuss the idea of ​​a gift that would honor the release of slaves after the civil war.

Laboulaye associated with the sculptorFrédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, wasInspired by LibertasA Roman goddess often represented with a criminal hood carried by released Roman slaves. The initial model of Bartholdi, made in 1870, shows Lady Liberty in the same right-right arm lifted holding the torch - but in his left hand, she seizes broken chains towardsrepresent the end of slavery and human servitude, according to theWashington Post. In the final structure, which now attracts 4.5 million annual visitors, Lady Liberty holds a tablet in his left hand with the Roman numerals of July 4, 1776, Independence Day. Broken channels still stay, but they are hidden under its feet and almost invisible for tourists.

After completing the statue in Paris in 1884, Bartholdi led his building on the island of Bedloe in New York, and finally unveiled "Liberty illuminating the world" on October 28, 1886. However, at that time.Original meaning and symbolism had been forgotten for a long time. At present, the era of reconstruction was completed, Jim Crow's legislation was adopted and the Supreme Court had rolled civil rights protections.

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In fact, to many in the black community, it seemed openly hypocritical. An editorial 1886 in theCleveland Gazette, an African American newspaper available at the view of theStatue of the Museum of Freedomsays: "Push the statue of Bartholdi, the torch and everything, in the ocean ... until the'Liberty' of this country is such that to allow a man of harmless and industrious color of the South to earn a respectable life for himself and his family, without being ku-kluxed, perhaps murdered, his daughter and his wife outraged, and his property destroyed. The idea of ​​"freedom" of this country "enlightening the world", or even Patagonia is ridiculous to the extreme. "

In 1892, six years after theStatue of Liberty Ellis Island has been erected, Ellis Island has opened an inspection station for millions of immigrants coming to America. It is only 1903 that the famous plate registered withEmma Lazare ' poem "The new colossus"(" Give me your tired, your poor / your hutget masses wishing to breathe ") have been added - anything but rewritten the story of what this statue stood for the first time. And for facts of black history More incredible, discoverThe greatest achievement of African Americans delivered the year you were born.