What do the broken chains at the feet of The Statue of Liberty symbolize? Do they symbolize that all people have the right to life, liberty and the pusit of happiness? Or, is this specifically for the abolishment of slavery? African Americans at the time didn't accept this theory of The Statue of Liberty because when it was erected on October 28, 1886, inequalities, discrimination and oppression still existed towards African Americans. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in his autobiography, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois:
A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life From the Last Decade of Its First Century, he was
unable to imagine the same sense of hope he assumed some immigrant arrivals had
felt when he sailed past the Statue on a return trip from Europe.
Here is my Travel Minute and the links that inspired the tale of two sites?
On June 17, 1885 lady liberty arrived into
the New York Harbor in 350 pieces. The statue was a gift from the people of
France.
What I find interesting about
the history of the Statue of Liberty are the different references made about
the meaning and intention of the statue.
On the www.statueofliberty.org site
Designed by Frédéric
Auguste Bartholdi and engineered by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, the designer of
the Eiffel Tower, the Statue was said to be a symbol of the alliance
established between the United States and France during the American
Revolution.
However, on the National Park Services site it also states that the statue represented much more to
those who proposed the gift. In 1865, Edouard
de Laboulaye (a French political thinker, U.S. Constitution expert, and
abolitionist) proposed that a monument be built as a gift from France to the
United States in order to commemorate the perseverance of freedom and democracy
in the United States and to honor the work of the late president Abraham
Lincoln. Also refer to http://www.nps.gov/stli/historyculture/abolition.htm
Now I find that the question of the purpose and symbolism of the gift often
comes about because of the chains that are at the feet of lady liberty. Do the
chains represent broken shackles and the abolishment of slavery or what France was still dealing with and breaking from a monarchy. Well, I don’t know? What do you think?
The Statue of Liberty will reopen to the public
on the 4th of July since being closed due to damage caused by
Hurricane Sandy
Ja'Vonne Harley
