Why does statue of liberty have chains on her feet

One of the first models, circa , had Lady Liberty holding the broken shackles and chains in her left hand. In the final iteration, her left hand wrapped around a tablet instead and the anti-slavery symbolism of the shackle and chain was moved to her feet. The America that is embroiled in yet another civil rights movement because we still can't seem to get the whole "liberty and justice for all" thing down pat.

The America that spent the century after slavery enacting laws and policies specifically designed to keep Black Americans down, followed by decades of continued social, economic and political oppression.

The America that sometimes does the right thing, but only after tireless activism manages to break through a ton of resistance to changing the racism-infused status quo. The U.

The same founding father who declared "that all men are created equal" enslaved more than human beings in his lifetime. The same people who celebrated religious freedom forced their Christian faith on Native peoples. Our most celebrated history of "liberty" and "freedom" is inseparable from our country's violent subjugation of entire races and ethnicities, and yet we compartmentalize rather than acknowledge that two things can be equally true at the same time.

Every nation on earth has problematic history, but what makes the U. Our nation was founded during the heyday of the transatlantic slave trade on land that was already occupied. The profound and world-changing document on which our government was built is the same document that was used to legally protect and excuse the enslavement of Black people.

The house in which the President of the United States sits today was built partially by enslaved people.

The deadliest war we've ever fought was over the "right" to enslave Black people. The truth is that blatant, violent racism was institutionalized from the very beginning of this country. For most of us, that truth has always been treated as a footnote rather than a feature in our history educations.

Until we really reckon with the full truth of our history—which it seems like we are finally starting to do—we won't ever get to see the full measure of what our country could be. In some ways, the evolution of the design of the Statue of Liberty—the moving of the broken shackle and chain from her hands to being half hidden beneath her robe, as well as the movement of our perception of her symbolism from abolition to immigration—is representative of how we've chosen to portray ourselves as a nation.

We want people to think: Hey, look at our Declaration of Independence! See how we welcome immigrants! We're so great! Oh, by the way, hereditary, race-based chattel slavery was a thing for longer than emancipation has been on our soil.

And then there was the years of Jim Crow. Not to mention how we've broken every promise made to Native Americans. And honestly, we haven't even been that nice to immigrants either. But look, independence and a nod to immigration! The thing is that we can be so great. The foundation of true liberty and justice for all, even with all its cracks, is still there. The vision in our founding documents was truly revolutionary.

We just have to decide to actually build the country we claim to have built—one that truly lives up to the values and ideals it professes for all people. Marcella Lopez didn't always want to be a teacher — but once she became one, she found her passion.

That's why she's stayed in the profession for 23 years, spending the past 16 at her current school in Los Angeles, where she mostly teaches children of color.

Lopez didn't encounter a teacher of color until college. Always remembering how I felt in that college class many years ago has kept me grounded year after year. It's also guided her teaching. Lopez says she always selects authors and characters that represent her students and celebrate other ethnicities so students can relate to what they read while also learning about other cultures.

When Ms. Lopez was in first grade, she "was speaking in Spanish to a new student, showing her where the restroom was when a staff member overheard our conversation and directed me to not speak in Spanish," she recalls. Part of her job, she says, is to find new ways to promote acceptance and inclusion in her classroom. One way she did that was by raising money through DonorsChoose to purchase books and other materials for her classroom that feature diverse perspectives.

Courtesy of Ms. Lopez to create projects that address racial equity in the classroom. Together, they hope to drive awareness and funding to projects that bring diversity, inclusion, and identity-affirming learning materials into classrooms across the country. You can see current projects seeking funding here.

Lopez wanted to incorporate inclusive coloring books into her lesson plans, The Allstate Foundation fully funded her project so she was able to purchase them. Each week, Ms. Lopez and the students would focus on a page in the book and discuss its message. And she plans to do the same again this school year. Without the support of all the donors that come together on this platform, we wouldn't have a sliver of what I've been able to provide for my students, especially during the pandemic," she says.

To help teachers like Ms. Lopez drive this important mission forward, donate on DonorsChoose. When you cram a mass of humanity onto a stadium floor, and those humans are fans of the performer on stage in front of them, anything can happen. People have been crushed in mosh pits before—the Who and Pearl Jam concerts have seen multiple fans trampled to death in a concert, for example. So when eight people were killed and dozens more injured at rapper Travis Scott's Astroworld Musical Festival in Houston last Friday, it was definitely tragic but not totally unprecedented.

What was hard for people to grasp was how the tragedy was handled in real time by the people with power to do something about it. Viral video shows two young concertgoers desperately trying to get a cameraman to stop the show because people were dying.

One of them, Seanna Faith McCarty , pleaded with him to tell someone to stop the show, pointing toward the crowd and saying that people were dying. Another concertgoer, identified on Twitter as Ayden Cruz, stood on the ladder of the camera platform and also yelled at the cameraman to stop the show. Here's another angle of the attempt to alert the crew member to the deadly situation on the ground. However, no one stopped the show.

According to Insider , at one point, Scott can be heard over the loudspeaker saying: "Who asked me to stop? You all know what you came here to do. They're streaming live. McCarty detailed the story of how she ended up on the camera platform, desperately trying to get someone to stop the show and do something about the deadly conditions in the crowd.

She described how she and her friend had wanted to be close to the stage, but ended up a ways back, on the side near a walkway. They were surrounded by chest-high metal barriers, and she said after waiting two hours for the concert to start, "Every gap was filled.

Where your feet were placed was where they stayed. Tall men, women. Women and men where the only thing they could see was the back of the person in front of them. The rush of people became tighter and tighter. Breathing became something only a few were capable of. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the thick, hot air. My friend began to gasp for breath, and she told me we needed to get out.

We tried. There was nowhere to go. The shoving got harder and harder. If someone's arms had been up, it was no longer a possibility to put it down. So, people began to choke one another as the mass swayed. It became more and more violent. What these people might not know is that the plaque was added to the Statue of Liberty in , about two decades after it was unveiled. In an interview with the Washington Post, the historian Edward Berenson notes that the concept of the well-known landmark was established back in June In fact, one of his first models was holding the broken shackles and chains in her left hand.

Recently, The New Yorker posted an article by the writer Robin Wright who looks through the idea of what the activist Laboulaye would think of the U. Still, the broken chains remain a powerful emblem for the abolition of slavery. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Those who wanted to downplay the connection between the statue and slavery insist that the year played no role in the idea to build the monument. In a report released by the U. Park Service in , the Park Service claimed that noted abolitionist Edouard de Laboulaye did not propose the idea of constructing a monument in Their report stated:.

This story is a legend. All available evidence points to its conception in or So while it is not surprising that Sarah Palin got it wrong, it should be noted that if asked, most of us would likely get it wrong too. As an American who is a decendent of slaves, I find it all the more shameful that this country continues to have countless monuments honoring men known to have been slaveholders but nothing honoring the millions whose blood, sweat and tears built this country.

The National Park Service took an important step towards that end when it changed its position. And people like Dr. Joy DeGruy and others likely had a hand in making that happen.

Joy DeGruy can be seen in the video below. She talks about the statue at about 43 seconds into the video. For years before immersing herself in the law and social justice, Ms. She is a contributing writer to Black Politics Today and is on the editorial board of the BlackCommentator. Follow SharonKyle What utter nonsense!

The Statue of Liberty is a representation of Diana Lucifera a female bringer of light but a false light. Just like Lucifer. In other words the Ruling Class think they are God.

There were millions more white slaves in America than black slaves. Still are. The public school history books are rubbish. Public school was designed to keep you in the dark and keep not just whites enslaved but ALL races. They wrte brutal and sadistic and worked slaves to death, mostly in the Caribbean and south America.

The European slave owners yended to work with the slaves as where the jews did not. There were also black families who owned white slaves. Whites didnt make good slaves and usually ended up revolting and killing their slave masters. Slavery was never abolished, it was just codified into the US Codes. Taxes are slavery. On a serious note, this was an excellent aticle Mrs Kyle. Very educational. Thank you for writing this. The statue was a gift from the French people not the French Government , the people of the US… a celebration of liberty inspired by the end of the Cival Way and the abolishment of slavery.

The poet had a hobby of sorts, volunteering to aid recent immigrants. Initially, she chose not to write a poem for the funding if the statue… after all, what did it have to do with immigration? The fundraisers were able to sweet-talk her into doing it, by saying that as immigrants entered the harbor by boat, the statue would be the first thing they would see… after which the romance of it all apparently changed her mind. Her poem sold at auction and was quickly forgotten… until many years after her death, a friend of hers found it and was able to place it as a memorial.

The gift has no other meaning. Its location was actually chosen to serve as a Lighthouse… though after it was completed, it was deemed too far inside the harbor to actually help with navigation. The sculptor already had plans to do a massive sculpture of a woman to serve as a lighthouse, and offered to build it at the Suez Canal, but was rejected. Eventually, he found de Laboulaye who wanted to have a monument to Liberty… so of course the sculptor Bartholdi used the opportunity to make his vision of a woman lighthouse, that happened to look like his mom, and the rest is history.

Any sincere observer of the present or student of the past will know that the ideal represented by Lady Liberty has been more evident in its absence or transgression than in its achievement. This is as true for the United States as it is for anywhere else in the World. Surely, instead of argument, our response should be to value this symbol by working all the harder to admit and redress wrongs and to achieve equity and equality for all. Simply put, this statue does not hold the meaning either you OR Palin were attempting to assign to it.

Free your mind. Very intresting reading. On the statue of liberty. But america has never fully adressed. The genocide and lies of deciet. And false promises made to the american Indians. In its list for land..

And yes. We in the u. Have our own issues in our history. But we have aknowledged them to a large extent…. Perhaps it should have been made for Africa as they still sell and trade slaves. Maybe they would not be selling people in the 21st century like merchandise if this had been gifted to them. Everyone is always talks about the salve in the United States but never mentions how they were sold by the same slave owners in Africa black men.

The purpose of the article is to show relationship between the end of slavery and the Statue of Liberty. Too bad you are so immature as to be offended and start attacking Africa. We all know some Africans were complicit… But the U. Slavery still exist all over the globe including in the U. If it was not for the pigment in the president skin.

He would be the same color of the white man. Slave would not have been sold if those very people were not murdered and threated with being murdered. The white men were the ones going in to the rural villages in africa and capturing them for slavery to the u.