Title: IHLC Web Archive Collection of Abraham Lincoln Statue Controversies, 2020-2023
Collection identifier: 1151
Extent: 0.0
Subjects: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865, Memorials, Monuments, Social justice, Statues
Following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of law enforcement in May 2020, calls for racial justice emerged throughout the political and social spheres of the United States. That summer, many community members and activists considered what it means to continue memorializing figures with controversial legacies in the 21st century. This led to calls for the removal of statues honoring figures with known racist ideologies and those who contributed to acts of racial violence, most notably figures of the Confederacy, though statues of Union figures were not immune from this reconsideration. Protestors who advocated for the removal of Abraham Lincoln statues cited the problematic depiction of Lincoln standing in a paternalistic position over a freed slave, as well as Lincoln’s 1862 order of the mass hanging of thirty-eight Dakota men as reason.
Calls for the removal of statues of Abraham Lincoln began with the Emancipation Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts, as early as the late 2010s. Pressure for removal heightened in 2020 and the statue was removed on December 29, 2020. Since then, several Lincoln statues throughout the United States have had campaigns for their removal, including those in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, D.C., and Wisconsin. Additionally, Lincoln statues have been defaced and toppled.
Repository: Illinois History and Lincoln Collections
Acquisition Source: The Illinois History and Lincoln Collection (IHLC) compiled this web archive using Archive-It, a web archiving software, from 2021-2024.
URL: https://files.archon.library.illinois.edu/ihlcsfa/lincoln-statue-web-archive.pdf
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