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The Statue of Liberty – A Broken Shackle of Rebellion
What you’re about to discover about Lady Liberty might completely change how you see America’s most iconic symbol. While many Americans view the Statue of Liberty as a welcoming beacon for immigrants, historian Edward Berenson reveals that “it also revives an aspect of the statue’s long-forgotten history: Lady Liberty was originally designed to celebrate the end of slavery, not the arrival of immigrants.” The timing tells the real story here.
Ellis Island, the inspection station through which millions of immigrants passed, didn’t open until six years after the statue was unveiled in 1886, and “The plaque with the famous Emma Lazarus poem — ‘Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ — wasn’t added until 1903.” According to researcher Yasmin Sabina Kahn, “Bartholdi’s original depiction of Lady Liberty had her holding broken chains in her left hand, with more broken chains and broken shackles at her feet. The chains were symbolic of the end of slavery in the United States.”
But here’s where it gets fascinating – in the final model, “The broken chains are still there though, beneath her feet, ‘but they’re not all that visible,'” and by the statue’s dedication, “the original meaning of the abolition of slavery had pretty much gotten lost.” American financiers funding the project “wanted no mention of slavery” and were “most opposed to the notion that the statue should in anyway acknowledge slavery,” forcing Laboulaye and Bartholdi to hide the chains at her feet.
Mount Rushmore – Built on Stolen Sacred Land
The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota Sioux, “the original occupants of the area when white settlers arrived,” where “The Black Hills in particular are considered sacred ground” and “The monument celebrates the European settlers who killed so many Native Americans and appropriated their land.” This isn’t just ancient history – it’s an ongoing legal battle with shocking Supreme Court findings.
In 1877, “the US federal government unilaterally seized the Black Hills — which contain Mount Rushmore — from the Sioux, a direct violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.” The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that this was illegal, stating “A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.”
In 1980, “the Supreme Court agreed that the Black Hills had been unconstitutionally taken” and “awarded the tribes a settlement of $120.5 million,” but “the Sioux have never accepted that payment — now, with interest and increased dollar value, worth more than $1 billion — declaring instead that ‘the Black Hills are not for sale.'” The Lakota called the mountain “Six Grandfathers” (Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe), and before it became Mount Rushmore, it was known as “Tunkasila Sakpe, the Six Grandfathers, to the Lakota Sioux—a holy mountain that rises up from the Black Hills, land they consider sacred.”
The White House – Built by Enslaved Labor
Here’s a truth that took decades to officially acknowledge: America’s symbol of democracy was literally built on the backs of enslaved people. Two of Washington, DC’s most famous buildings, “the White House and the United States Capitol, were built in large part by enslaved African Americans,” with “National Archives holdings include wage rolls, promissory notes, and vouchers that document the work done by slaves on these two historic structures.”
The geography made this inevitable: “Washington, D.C., was built on landed ceded to the federal government by Virginia and Maryland, and at the time the Potomac region was home to almost half of the country’s 750,000 slaves.” When “the D.C. commissioners originally tried to bring cheap workers over from Europe,” their efforts fell short, so “they forced local enslaved people to provide the labor, often renting workers from their masters for year-long periods of time.”
The White House Historical Association has now documented that “307 enslaved people” were linked “to building and staffing the White House through the early 19th century,” with “Historians found enslaved people were involved in every aspect of construction.” These “enslaved laborers participated in every stage of building construction, from the quarrying and transportation of stone to the construction of the Executive Mansion,” where “Enslaved people quarried and cut the rough stone that was later dressed and laid by Scottish masons,” and records show “Slave carpenters Peter, Ben, Daniel, and Harry were noted as owned by James Hoban.”
The Lincoln Memorial – A Stage for Civil Rights
Abraham Lincoln’s memorial took on a meaning far beyond what its creators intended, becoming one of America’s most powerful symbols through a moment that wasn’t planned by the government. The memorial’s true significance emerged not from its dedication ceremony, but from a hot August day in 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. stood on its steps.
Originally built to honor Lincoln’s preservation of the Union, the memorial became something entirely different when King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from its steps during the March on Washington. This transformed the monument from a static tribute to the past into a living symbol of the ongoing fight for equality. The irony wasn’t lost on participants – here was a memorial to the Great Emancipator serving as the backdrop for demands that his promises finally be fulfilled.
What makes this even more striking is how the memorial’s symbolism shifted so dramatically. Before 1963, it was primarily a tourist destination and ceremonial space. After King’s speech, it became forever associated with the civil rights movement and the unfinished business of racial justice in America. The memorial didn’t change physically, but its meaning was completely rewritten by that single historic moment.
The Alamo – A Rewritten Texas Myth
The story you learned about the Alamo as a heroic last stand for freedom conveniently omits a crucial detail about what kind of “freedom” was really being defended. The Texas Revolution wasn’t just about independence – it was fundamentally about the right to own slaves in territory where Mexico had banned the practice.
Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829, but Texas settlers, mostly from the American South, brought their enslaved workforce with them anyway. When Mexico tried to enforce its anti-slavery laws and restrict further American immigration, tensions exploded into war. The men who died at the Alamo weren’t just fighting for Texas independence – they were fighting to preserve a slave-based economy that Mexico threatened to end.
This context completely changes the narrative of heroic sacrifice that’s been promoted for nearly two centuries. James Bowie owned slaves, and many of the volunteers came from slave-owning families in the Deep South. The famous “Remember the Alamo!” battle cry was as much about preserving slavery as it was about Texas independence, making the site a complex symbol that embodies both American courage and the darker aspects of westward expansion.
Mount Vernon – Washington’s Enslaved Workforce
George Washington’s plantation home presents one of America’s most uncomfortable contradictions – the man who led the fight for freedom was simultaneously one of the country’s largest slaveholders. Mount Vernon housed over 300 enslaved people during Washington’s lifetime, making it more than just a presidential residence but a major center of human bondage.
The plantation’s beautiful gardens, elegant rooms, and productive farms were all maintained by enslaved labor, yet for decades this reality was downplayed or ignored entirely in tours and historical presentations. Visitors could admire Washington’s leadership and character while remaining largely unaware of the hundreds of people held in bondage just steps away from the mansion’s grand rooms.
What’s particularly striking is how Washington himself struggled with this contradiction, eventually providing for the freedom of his slaves in his will – but only after his wife’s death, and only for those he directly owned. Many of the enslaved people at Mount Vernon belonged to his wife Martha and remained in bondage even after Washington’s provisions took effect. Today, the estate has worked to tell the complete story, but it took until the 1990s for slavery to become a central part of the Mount Vernon narrative.
Ellis Island – A Fortress of Exclusion
While Ellis Island is celebrated as the gateway to the American dream, its history reveals a much more complex reality of who was welcomed and who was turned away. The island processed over 12 million immigrants between 1892 and 1954, but it also served as a detention center and deportation point for thousands deemed “undesirable” by American authorities.
The inspection process was designed to filter out those considered physically, mentally, or morally unfit for American society. Medical examinations could result in immediate deportation for conditions ranging from trachoma to pregnancy outside marriage. Political radicals, particularly during the Red Scare periods, found themselves detained indefinitely or shipped back to countries they had fled seeking freedom.
Asian immigrants faced particularly harsh treatment due to exclusion laws that severely limited their entry into the United States. While Europeans might wait hours or days for processing, Asians often faced weeks or months of detention in cramped quarters with uncertain outcomes. The island’s reputation as a welcoming beacon masks these systematic exclusions that shaped American immigration policy for decades.
The Liberty Bell – Silenced by Slavery
The irony of the Liberty Bell is almost too perfect to believe: America’s most famous symbol of freedom was cast in 1753, when slavery was not only legal but thriving throughout the colonies. The bell’s inscription proclaims “liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,” yet that liberty explicitly excluded the hundreds of thousands of enslaved people living in those same lands.
When the bell first rang in Philadelphia, the city was a major center of the slave trade, with enslaved people being bought and sold just blocks away from where the bell hung. The Pennsylvania State House, where the bell resided, was where many of the founding documents were signed by men who themselves owned human beings as property.
Even more striking, the bell’s famous crack – which has become part of its symbolism – occurred during a period when the contradiction between American ideals and slavery was becoming increasingly impossible to ignore. The bell essentially “broke” under the weight of American hypocrisy, making its damaged state a fitting metaphor for a nation that proclaimed liberty while denying it to millions.
The Golden Gate Bridge – Suicide and Suppression
Behind the Golden Gate Bridge’s stunning beauty lies one of America’s most tragic statistics: Between 1937 and 2024, “an estimated 2,000 people jumped to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge.” The bridge has become known as a “suicide magnet” and remains “the site of approximately 30 suicides per year.” For decades, this devastating reality was largely ignored in official narratives about the iconic structure.
It wasn’t until January 2024 that “installation of metal suicide barriers that stretch 20 feet out from the walkway was completed,” after years of debate and delays. The project was originally “scheduled to be complete in 2021 at a projected cost of $211 million,” but delays pushed completion to 2024, with officials attributing setbacks to contractor issues and project complexity.
Recent research shows the nets are working: there has been a “73% decline in suicides in the 12 months since the nets were completed,” with suicide rates dropping from 2.48 per month before installation to 0.67 after completion. The bridge’s tragic dual nature – engineering marvel and site of immense human suffering – represents how beauty and darkness can coexist in America’s most celebrated landmarks.
The Gateway Arch – Segregation’s Shadow
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, completed in 1965, was built during the height of the Civil Rights era, yet its construction initially excluded the very people fighting for equality. Black workers faced systematic discrimination in hiring for the massive project, leading to protests and civil rights demonstrations at the construction site in 1964.
The protests at the Arch site became part of the broader civil rights movement, with demonstrators demanding equal employment opportunities on a monument supposedly celebrating westward expansion and American progress. The bitter irony wasn’t lost on activists – a monument to American opportunity was being built without providing opportunities to African Americans.
The Arch’s construction also required demolishing historic neighborhoods, displacing many Black families and businesses in the name of urban renewal. What was marketed as progress and beautification resulted in the destruction of established communities, a pattern repeated in cities across America during the urban renewal movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Plymouth Rock – A Mythical Foundation
Here’s a secret that might shock anyone who learned about Plymouth Rock in elementary school: there’s absolutely no evidence that the Pilgrims ever set foot on the famous boulder. The entire story was invented more than a century after the Mayflower landing, as part of a deliberate effort to create a more dramatic origin myth for New England.
The Plymouth Rock legend didn’t emerge until 1741, when 95-year-old Thomas Faunce claimed his father had told him the Pilgrims landed on the rock. Even then, many people were skeptical of the story, but it gained momentum as Americans sought tangible symbols of their colonial origins. By the 19th century, the rock had become a mandatory tourist destination despite its dubious historical credentials.
What makes this even more absurd is how the rock has been moved, broken, and rebuilt multiple times. The current “Plymouth Rock” is essentially a reconstruction of fragments, having been relocated from its original position, dropped and shattered during a moving attempt, and supplemented with concrete and other materials. Visitors today are literally looking at a fake recreation of a rock that probably never had any historical significance in the first place.
The Capitol Building – A Slave-Built Dome of Power
The United States Capitol, like the White House, was constructed using enslaved labor, with “Enslaved African Americans, leased out by their owners, mined sandstone from local quarries and built the United States Capitol,” meaning “Congress, the institution that guarded the peoples’ freedom, held sessions in a building constructed by forced labor.” The irony here is almost unbearable – America’s temple of democracy was built by people who had no voice in that democracy.
Starting in 1791, Pierre L’Enfant “leased African American slaves from their masters to clear the sites for the ‘President’s House’ and the Capitol,” and when “Washington’s three-man Board of Commissioners” couldn’t find enough European workers, “the commissioners turned to African Americans slaves” who “performed skilled labor such as carpentry, stonecutting, and bricklaying.”
For decades, the same halls where Congress debated the future of slavery echoed with the voices of representatives defending the institution that had literally built the walls around them. The Capitol dome, completed during the Civil War, was raised by both free and enslaved workers, creating a powerful symbol of a nation at war with itself over the very labor force that had constructed its most important buildings.
Independence Hall – Birthplace of Freedom and Hypocrisy
Independence Hall in Philadelphia witnessed the signing of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, documents that proclaimed revolutionary ideals about human equality and natural rights. Yet many of the men who signed these documents in that very room were slaveholders who saw no contradiction between owning human beings and declaring that “all men are created equal.”
Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independence, owned over 600 enslaved people throughout his lifetime, including while he was writing about inalienable rights. George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention while maintaining one of Virginia’s largest slave populations. The room where America’s founding ideals were debated and signed was filled with men who profited from denying those very ideals to others.
Perhaps most remarkably, the Constitution they created in that room included provisions protecting slavery, such as the Three-Fifths Compromise and the Fugitive Slave Clause. Independence Hall wasn’t just the birthplace of American freedom – it was also the birthplace of constitutional protections for slavery, making it a symbol of both America’s highest aspirations and its deepest moral failures.
Yellowstone National Park – Eviction of Native Tribes
The creation of America’s first national park required the forced removal of indigenous peoples who had lived in the Yellowstone region for thousands of years. The Shoshone, Crow, Blackfeet, and other tribes used the area for hunting, gathering, and spiritual ceremonies, but the establishment of the park in 1872 made their presence illegal virtually overnight.
The military enforced these new boundaries with brutal efficiency, treating Native Americans as poachers on land they had occupied for millennia. Tribes were forbidden from hunting traditional game like buffalo and elk, destroying subsistence patterns that had sustained them for generations. The park’s “pristine wilderness” was actually a landscape actively managed by indigenous peoples for centuries.
What’s particularly galling is how the park service initially promoted Yellowstone as “untouched” wilderness, completely erasing the human history of the region. This mythology of empty land waiting to be “discovered” by white explorers became the foundation for the entire national park system, setting a pattern of indigenous displacement that would be repeated across the American West.
The Hoover Dam – A Deadly Engineering Marvel
The Hoover Dam stands as one of America’s greatest engineering achievements, but its construction came at a terrible human cost that was deliberately covered up by the government and contractors. While official records claim that 96 workers died during construction, the real number was likely much higher, with many deaths attributed to “natural causes” rather than workplace accidents.
Workers faced deadly conditions including extreme heat, carbon monoxide poisoning from vehicles in tunnels, and falls from enormous heights. The most insidious killer was silicosis from breathing rock dust, which caused lung disease that killed workers years after construction ended. These deaths were often not counted in official statistics, allowing contractors to maintain the fiction of a relatively safe project.
Labor conditions were so harsh that workers went on strike in 1931, demanding basic safety equipment and drinkable water. The company’s response was to bring in strikebreakers and refuse most safety demands, prioritizing speed and profit over worker welfare. The dam’s completion ahead of schedule was achieved through exploitation that would be unthinkable in modern construction projects.
The Hollywood Sign – A Suicide and Scandal Symbol
Before it became synonymous with movie glamour, the Hollywood sign was simply an advertisement for a housing development called “Hollywoodland.” But the sign’s transformation into a cultural icon was marked by tragedy when actress Peg Entwistle jumped to her death from the letter “H” in 1932, making it one of America’s most famous suicide sites.
Entwistle’s death captured the dark side of Hollywood dreams – she was a struggling actress who had appeared in just one film and was facing financial ruin when she climbed the 45-foot-tall letter and jumped. Her suicide note read simply
Besides founding Festivaltopia, Luca is the co founder of trib, an art and fashion collectiv you find on several regional events and online. Also he is part of the management board at HORiZONTE, a group travel provider in Germany.
