The debate over historical monuments currently roiling the United States is, in fact, nothing new. Back in 1876, none other than Frederick Douglass himself took issue with a Washington, D.C., statue of Abraham Lincoln, which activists are now lobbying to have taken down. Only now, however, do historians have proof of what Douglass thought of it when it went up. The statue in Lincoln Park, known as the Emancipation Memorial, depicts the 16th president beside a Black man who, depending on how you see the piece, is either kneeling or…
