The Statue of Liberty: "Whose Symbol is it Anyway?"

by Maurice A. Barboza (1986, unpublished)

There has been talk -- as there was during the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence -- of whether blacks should participate in the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. A preeminent black historian of the slavery era, who certainly knows differently, told the New York Times recently, "it's a celebration for immigrants and that has nothing to do with me."

On the Fourth of July when Liberty's new torch is lit and Americans drop tears of patriotic joy for their ancestors who crossed the ocean penniless and powerless (but I might add in possession of the most valuable commodity in the world -- their own bodies), we should shed a few for the North star and the lanterns that blacks and cooperative whites placed along the routes of the old Underground Railroad.

Black men, women and children fleeing Southern slavery were guided to a succession of "stations" often identified by a lantern in the hand of a hitching post manikin. A burning wick signaled food, housing and temporary safety. Darkness meant that slave hunters might be skulking around or an unsympathetic member of the household was at home. The weary bodies had to trudge on without quenching their hunger or their fear of capture.

Thousands of "tired, poor, and huddled" blacks migrated to Cleveland, Philadelphia, New Bedford, New York and other "meccas of freedom," including the Seminole Indian lands in Florida, beginning in the post Revolutionary era. Slavery and racism --the antitheses of democracy -- made them refugees in their homeland, searching the darkness for a flame and the purest form of liberty, the right to own ones self.

Blacks fled Natchez, Jackson, Little Rock, Montgomery, Savannah, Charleston, Appomattox and other cities. William Bush walked from below the Mason-Dixon Line to Newport, Indiana in wooden shoes he carved for the trip. Henry "Box" Brown carried no immigrant's dilapitated luggage. He had himself nailed inside a box and transported as ships cargo from Richmond to Philadelphia. After the civil war, the migration continued above ground in lock step with the arrival of nearly 30 million immigrants who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry, including New Bedford where my own father and grandfathers arrived from Cape Verde off the West coast of Africa. That was before the back door to America for the "darker" cultures closed shut for a generation.

The distinguished French jurist and political thinker de Laboulaye, who in 1865 first proposed the Statue of Liberty, did not intend it to be a symbol to immigrants. This evolved powerfully and fortuitously six years after the dedication in 1886, with the opening of the immigration processing station. The statue was supposed to prod France and the world to follow America down the road toward liberty that the end of the civil war and slavery signified.

But de Laboulaye could not have f reseen that by the close of the 19th century his statue would reign over the rise of Jim Crow. The light cast by the civil war dimmed, then went out all over the land. Blacks were barred from voting, office holding and assembling. Lynching was rampant; justice became nonexistent. Segregation blanketed schools, churches, restaurants, cemeteries and businesses. Liberty was dead in America; and the statue was blemished by hypocrites who hid behind her in order to conceal their racist and anti-democratic deeds.

In 1986, discrimination and lack of opportunity are still with us, but there is more light in America today than at any time since Liberty's dedication. That is because the struggle for civil rights and redemption succeeded, and we are beginning to recognize what successive generations of blacks have done for America, from the Revolution to the freedom riders, sit-ins, and litigation of the l950s and '60s. Five thousand blacks helped to win Independence and their own personal liberty during the Revolution, while countless others ran away or petitioned for freedom. These men and women formed churches and self help groups -- the core of the civil rights movement. Over 180,000 black soldiers, one-eighth of the Union Army, helped to win the Civil War. They served in the War of 1812 and in all of the wars fought for "liberty" in this century.

How many wars do we have to fight? How many hardships for freedom and equality do we have to endure for us as black people to recognize that America is ours, too? We must embrace all of her opportunities and symbols in the same indomitable spirit that we grasped freedom. The powerful and positive lesson of how courageous blacks rescued the concept of liberty from the throes of hypocrisy must be repeated time and again in order to inspire the emulation of future generations and unity among all citizens.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., looking beyond the bars of Birmingham jail into the "darkness" of 1963 concluded his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by saying -- "One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing this nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."

One day America will see in our great symbols, like the Statue of Liberty, the reflection of the struggle for freedom. But only we -- all Americans -- can make it so by assuring that Liberty's torch will light the way for those in this country still struggling for the American dream and those in other parts of the world still struggling for human rights.