Iconography, Race, and Lore in the Atlantic World

On the afternoon of July 4, 2018, the images of a black woman sitting calmly (then lying and crouching) at the feet of the Statue of Liberty flooded social media timelines and broadcast news programs. A short time earlier, the woman at the center of the spectacle, activist Therese Patricia Okoumou, had parted ways with a group of direct-action demonstrators from Rise and Resist to scale the base of the statue. Collectively, the group of eight had decided to take a stance on Independence Day against President Donald Trump's recent "zero tolerance" immigration policies and the separation and detention of Mexican and Central American children. Of her own volition, Okoumou—who had immigrated from the Republic of Congo more than two decades ago—climbed before the demonstrators were confronted by police and tucked herself "in a copper crease of Lady Liberty's robes," (Killelea, "ABOLISH ICE: Woman Climbs Statue of Liberty to Protest Trump's Immigration Policies"). Her sole demonstration effectively shut down the national monument as authorities attempted to retrieve her.

Okoumou, who was arrested after a three-hour standoff with the NYPD, later told The Guardian that, in addition to thinking of and protesting for the children held in detention, she was imagining the symbolism of the very space she occupied: "I was thinking of Lady Liberty above me, you are so huge, you have always been a symbol of welcome to people arriving in America and right now, for me under this sandal, she is a shelter," (Joanna Walters, "Are They Going to Shoot Me?: Statue of Liberty Climber on Her Anti-Trump Protest"). What Therese Okoumou declares is, after all, what has come to represent the broader semiotic meaning of the Statue of Liberty. The robed, torch-bearing woman is the declared "Mother of Exiles." Historian Tyler Stovall writes that while Lady Liberty, a gift from France to the United States, is considered "the most famous immigrant in American history," there have been limits to the meaning and extent of her iconographic symbolism, especially as it regards American citizens and immigrants of color (Stovall 17). Stovall writes:

The resplendent white lady standing above New York Harbor turned her back on the racialized working masses of Europe and the increasingly marginalized blacks and other people of color in America. When Americans celebrated the inauguration of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, they celebrated a racialized version of liberty [. . .] Right from the beginning of its history, therefore, the Statue of Liberty was a powerful representation of white freedom.

(13)

Representing what Stovall names "the whiteness of freedom" inherent in American liberty, the neoclassical design of the Statue of Liberty—modeled after the Roman goddess, Libertas—has long had limitations assigned implicitly (at the very least) to its meaning. However, what is interesting about Okoumou's choice to find "shelter" at the feet of this statue is that she too understands the limitations of the statue's iconography. This would explain why she and the other protestors decided to demonstrate on the monument on Independence Day in the first place. Yet, like many activists before her, she seems to have sought her meditation at the feet of the statue as a way to both reclaim that iconography for herself, as a black woman and a foreign-born naturalized citizen, while holding the nation accountable for its failure to reflect this iconography via libertarian values.

The visibility and the ongoing conversations steeped in the racialization of American iconography in the form of monuments, policies, art, and public spaces make the most recent texts by Jared Hickman, Fred Moten, and John Levi Barnard all the more compelling and timely. Each of the authors grapple with some iteration of the impact of black expression via literature, visual art, or performance on...