The original Statue of Liberty was designed as muslim, Egyptian peasant lady and was supposed to stand at the entrance to the suez canal!
So, Furious wrote a popular article a while back stating that the original statue of liberty presented to the U.S. was of a black woman with chains at her feet. This surprise history seemed to be something lost but sadly there seems some controversy around it and Snopes reported the story as false! However, now, there seems to be new info that plays with the idea that the original idea was indeed not the shining shite lady liberty that overlooks NYC today!
Read Furious’s original story here.
The Daily Beast reported that French sculpter Frederic Auguste Bartholdi originally conceived the lady as an Egyptian peasant woman. Her raised lantern would server as a lighthouse and symbol of progress.
He tried to sell the idea to the khedive of Egypt, Ishma’il Pasha but it wasn’t working.
So, armed with the dream of his new colossus, Bartholdi sailed to the USA to resell the idea. He reimagined the lady as the symbol we see today. He explored New York, originally considering the tip of Manhattan and Central Park before passing her island home and settling on that as the place!
The statue itself was largely paid for by France but also was helped with American donations (many from school kids) and was erected to face France.
So, what did the original sketch look like? You can see below!
Absolutely fascinating!
Story details via The Daily Beast: http://thebea.st/1Qu6IKu
what happened to the black statue of liberty
What makes Snopes the arbiter of our history?? Their inherent bias can compromise their judgement and decision making. Ijs!
Just an FYI, Egypt is in Africa. You know that place where Africans live and America refers to those people as “black people”. Soooooo if it was an Egyptian woman it may shock you but she is an African woman.
EXACTLY.
Some people are so full of themselves that they actually believe what they see on TV without understanding a bit of its history. She may have been a light-skinned BLACK woman, as was Nefertari/Nefertiti, but she was still what they refer to as “colored” or “Negroidal.”
Egyptians were AFRICANS, and not white-skinned Europeans with blonde hair and blue eyes, like Elizabeth Taylor — and they even had to darken her skin with studio makeup in order to be closer to the facts.
For them, stealing an identity of a people is one thing, for people to believe it is another.