-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- [Is it REALLY about Foster? Or maybe, an earlier, more urgent, unsolved mystery? Is there not one firm rock or stump one can stand on in the swamp of history??? Answer: No! --MS] Feb 7, 2000 - 02:35 PM Park Service Investigates Statue of Liberty's Racial Origins By Tom Kirchofer Associated Press Writer BOSTON (AP) - The Statue of Liberty has long stood as a beacon of hope to immigrants. But National Park Service researchers are looking into the possibility that Lady Liberty may have been intended, at least in part, as a monument to freed black slaves. And if that's true, it could lead to a change in how the park service portrays the 114-year-old monument's history. An unsourced text began appearing on the Internet several years ago and quickly spread the theory that the widely accepted history of the Statue of Liberty is not true, says Rebecca M. Joseph, a Boston-based park service anthropologist. The Internet report said that the statue "was intended as a monument to the abolition of slavery in the United States and that the original model was a black woman," according to Joseph. The park service's official history of the Statue of Liberty holds it was proposed by French historian Edouard Laboulaye in 1865 to commemorate the friendship between France and the United States born during the Revolutionary War. But Laboulaye was also a leader of the French abolitionist movement with a commitment to fighting slavery, notes Diane H. Dayson, the statue's superintendent. "Our history states that he was an abolitionist, but we still don't know whether or not it was relative to the Statue of Liberty," she says. "The important thing for us is just to validate the history one way or another." Joseph is now combing archives and libraries here and in France to find out whether Laboulaye also wanted the statue to honor the recently freed slaves. Dayson says he may have conceived the statue with both the slaves and Franco-American friendship in mind. Richard Newman, a research officer at Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research, says it is widely believed in academic circles that Laboulaye meant for the statue to honor the slaves, as well as mark the recent Union victory in the Civil War and the life of Abraham Lincoln. However, by the time sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi's 151-foot statue was erected in New York Harbor in 1886, European immigration had begun to rise dramatically and the statue took on a whole new symbolism, he says. "It was entirely related to slavery, and not about immigration at all," Newman says. "The 'liberty' was the freedom of the slaves." Joseph also is checking into the possibility a 21-inch model of Lady Liberty completed by Bartholdi in 1870 may have been based on the likeness of a black woman. That model, now in the Museum of the City of New York, has a broken chain around its hand; the statue in the harbor has a more discreet broken shackle on its foot. Joseph refused Monday to say what she has discovered so far. Her final report is due for release this summer. "Those people who are looking for a report that's going to support the most traditional interpretation of the Statue of Liberty are going to be disappointed," she said, "and those who are looking for a report that will support the rumors in their entirety will also be disappointed. "History is much more complicated than that. It's not a sound bite." ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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