History vs. Emancipation

The Black woman’s representation is two-fold. According to the artist Randolph Rogers in a letter to the Secretary of State of Rhode Island in 1866, the allegorical woman represented “History.” [3] However, in the Providence Journal beginning on June 24, 1870, the woman was dubbed “Emancipation.” [4] This information becomes useful when considering how her presence on the monument was digested and interpreted. Rogers casting the Black allegorical female as history was, frankly, a bold move. Not only was there a Black woman present on the monument, but she was crafted with the idea of something that impacts and influences us all. History is shared, a more secular construction of the past that anyone can belong to. David Blight using the words of American poet Robert Hayden says that then “sometimes history ‘accuses’ us, as Hayden says, and we cannot ‘stare…down’ it’s moral responsibilities.” [5] History by nature of fact, reveals the ugliness of our pasts in a way that we cannot deny. Thus, it holds white Americans accountable for horrors like slavery, and with its relevance to everyone, also imbues the Black allegorical woman with a unique kind of power. Through her signification of history, she represents all sides of it, including those pasts created by the white American ruling class. Her role as “Emancipation,” does little to this same end.

Seemingly to those who saw her (at least in the Providence Journal), the allegorical figure was a Black woman with broken chains and therefore she was emancipation; overall, a simplistic interpretation but well-established visual metaphor that served to water down any complex nuance the visual indicated of the potential power of Black people and groups. While this interpretation of the figure may appear to be a casual variant that still fulfills her purpose as an allegorical figure, her reading as emancipation specifically forces her into the role of not just an allegorical woman, but a Black allegorical woman and nothing more. Because, after all, only a Black woman would need to be freed. Even while the figure as a signifier of emancipation honors the colored men who served to attain their people’s freedom, her sole contextualization as such continues to perpetuate notions of Otherness under a post-Civil War and thus “reformed” white hegemonic lens.