The True Story of the Statue of Liberty—and the Lies We Were Taught

The Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor as one of the most iconic symbols of the United States. For generations, it has been described in classrooms as a monument to immigration, freedom, and the American Dream. But as historian James Loewen famously argued in Lies My Teacher Told Me, much of what we learn about American history in school is filtered through a lens of nationalism, sanitized patriotism, and corporate publishing constraints.

The true origins of the Statue of Liberty—and how its meaning was reshaped—offer a revealing case study in the politics of historical memory, especially relevant in a time of widespread textbook censorship in states like Texas and Florida.

A Monument to Emancipation, Not Immigration

The Statue of Liberty was born out of abolitionist hope. In 1865, French jurist and anti-slavery advocate Édouard René de Laboulaye proposed a gift to the U.S. to celebrate the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design a monument that embodied liberty as a universal right, not just a national slogan.

Early concepts for the statue included overt symbols of emancipation, including broken chains and references to the 13th Amendment. Though the final version downplayed these features, Bartholdi included broken shackles at Liberty’s feet—largely hidden from view today. This history is rarely taught in public schools and barely acknowledged at the statue itself.

History Rewritten for Comfort

Instead of honoring emancipation, the dominant narrative of the statue quickly shifted. By the early 20th century, as immigrants passed through Ellis Island, Lady Liberty was rebranded as a welcoming mother figure for “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” Emma Lazarus’s poem, added in 1903, sealed this reinterpretation.

Meanwhile, African Americans, Native peoples, and others excluded from the nation’s promises saw the statue not as a beacon of liberty but as a symbol of American hypocrisy. As W.E.B. Du Bois and later James Baldwin noted, liberty without equality is a hollow ideal. But those perspectives were rarely included in school curricula.

Textbooks—especially those approved in conservative-controlled states like Texas—often omit or gloss over this contradiction. Instead, the narrative is one of uninterrupted progress and benevolent nationalism.

Lies My Teacher Told Me and the Myth of Innocence

In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen documented how U.S. history textbooks routinely distort or omit uncomfortable truths. The real story of the Statue of Liberty—its abolitionist roots, the racial critique it provoked, and its hijacking by immigration mythmakers—is one such truth.

Loewen exposed how textbook publishers tailor content to meet the political requirements of textbook adoption committees, especially in Texas and California, where decisions affect national markets. As a result, statues become decontextualized symbols, and historical figures are flattened into caricatures.

In recent years, state governments in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere have escalated these distortions through direct censorship. Books and curriculum frameworks have been edited to downplay slavery, deny systemic racism, and suppress discussions of gender and sexuality. A 2022 Texas law, for instance, required teachers to present “opposing viewpoints” on issues like the Holocaust and racial inequality. Florida’s Department of Education removed references to “social justice” and “diversity” from textbooks entirely.

These efforts are not new, but they are intensifying. And they reflect a broader struggle over who controls historical memory—and who gets to be remembered.

A Symbol Still in Contest

Today, the Statue of Liberty continues to appear in textbooks, tourism ads, and political speeches. But rarely is it presented as what it originally was: a radical, abolitionist gesture from one republic to another.

By hiding the broken chains at Liberty’s feet—both physically and metaphorically—textbooks have helped maintain a myth of American innocence. They have obscured the ways in which the United States has failed to live up to its promises of freedom and equality.

Reclaiming the true story of the Statue of Liberty is not just a historical correction. It is an act of resistance against political censorship and historical amnesia. It is a reminder that symbols matter—and that who tells the story matters even more.

---

Sources:

James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Yasmin Sabina Khan, Enlightening the World: The Creation of the Statue of Liberty
Tyler Stovall, White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea
Edward Berenson, The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story
National Park Service: https://www.nps.gov/stli
Florida Department of Education curriculum guidelines (2022-2024)
Texas Senate Bill 3 (2021)

Juneteenth in New Jersey: The Complicity of Higher Education in Slavery

New Jersey’s legacy as a “slave state of the North” is often overlooked, especially in the sanitized histories of its most prestigious universities. Yet a closer examination reveals that the state’s institutions of higher education—particularly Princeton University and Rutgers University—were not only complicit in slavery, but were active beneficiaries of racial exploitation. Their histories are deeply intertwined with a system that built wealth and social power through the bondage of Black people.

This article is based on the findings of For Such a Time as This: The Nowness of Reparations for Black People in New Jersey, a landmark report from the New Jersey Reparations Council. The report is an urgent call for transformative change through reparative justice. It draws a direct throughline from New Jersey’s foundational embrace of slavery, through its Jim Crow era and more recent forms of structural racism, to today’s reality of “Two New Jerseys”—one Black, one white, separated by a staggering $643,000 racial wealth gap between median Black and white family wealth.

Princeton University: Built by the Enslaved, for the Elite

Founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, Princeton University’s early leadership reads like a roll call of slaveholders. Nine of its first presidents enslaved Black people. At least five brought enslaved individuals to live and labor on campus—including Aaron Burr Sr., who in 1756 purchased a man named Caesar to work in the newly built President’s House. Another, John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president from 1768 to 1794, kept two people in bondage and spoke out against emancipation, claiming that freeing enslaved people would bring “ruin.”

Financially and culturally, Princeton thrived on slavery. Many of its trustees, donors, and faculty enriched themselves through plantation economies and the transatlantic slave trade. Historian Craig Steven Wilder has shown that the university’s enrollment strategy was deliberately skewed toward elite southern families who owned enslaved people. From 1768 to 1794, the proportion of southern students doubled, while the number of students from New Jersey declined. Princeton became a finishing school for the sons of America’s racial aristocracy.

Slavery was not just in the background—it was present in the daily life of the institution. Enslaved Black people worked in kitchens, cleaned dormitories, and served food at official university events. Human beings were bought and sold in full view of Nassau Hall. These men and women, their names often lost to history, were the invisible labor force that built the foundation for one of the wealthiest universities in the world.

The results of this complicity are measurable. Princeton graduates shaped the American Republic—including President James Madison, three U.S. Supreme Court justices, 13 governors, 20 senators, and 23 congressmen. Many of them carried forward the ideologies of white supremacy and anti-Black violence they absorbed in their youth.

Rutgers University: Queen’s College and the Profits of Enslavement

Rutgers University, originally established as Queen’s College in 1766, shares a similarly grim legacy. The college’s early survival depended on donations and labor directly tied to slavery. Prominent among its early trustees was Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who made his fortune by trading enslaved people and operating Caribbean plantations.

Enslaved labor helped build Rutgers, too. A man named Will, enslaved by the family of a college trustee, is among the few individuals whose name has survived. His work helped construct the early physical campus, though his story, like so many others, is only briefly mentioned in account books and correspondence.

The intellectual environment of Queen’s College mirrored the dominant racial attitudes of the time. While some students and faculty opposed slavery, their voices were overwhelmed by an institution that upheld the social, political, and economic status quo. Rutgers, like Princeton, prepared white elites to rule a society built on racial exclusion.

Toward Reparative Justice

The For Such a Time as This report from the New Jersey Reparations Council underscores that the legacy of slavery is not a relic of the past—it is embedded in the material realities of today. New Jersey’s racial wealth gap—$643,000 between Black and white families—is not accidental. It is the result of centuries of dispossession, disinvestment, and discrimination.

The state’s leading universities played a formative role in that history. Acknowledgment of this fact is only a first step. True reckoning means meaningful reparative action. It means directing resources and power toward the communities that have been systematically denied them. It means funding education, housing, healthcare, and business development in Black communities, and making structural changes to how wealth and opportunity are distributed.

Princeton and Rutgers are not just relics of the past; they are major economic and political actors in the present. As institutions with billion-dollar endowments and vast influence, they have both the means and the moral obligation to contribute to a just future.

The question now is whether they will answer the call.