Was the original statue of liberty a black woman?

[Daniel]

apparently it was to represent blacks who were forced into America, and it symbolized their freedom.But America didn't like it and made them create a new design that was more "white". I can't find anything that makes this claim true. It's suddenly all over facebook and I want to know if this is true or not.
I am in no way supporting this claim, I am simply here to find out the truth.

[Hip Abe Lincoln]

Never heard of that. Dont believe everything u read and hear,

[no]

Of All of the Anti-White, Anti-American conspiracy garbage that I have heard, that one is at least tied for first place for the most stupid.

If anyone is concerned with what White People did to Black People that long ago, they should ALSO be concerned with the fact that it was other BLACK people who sold their own kind to the whites. Otherwise they are RACISTS.

The Model for the face, BTW was either the Artist's Mother, or Mother-in-law.

[TheSicilianSage]

Bartholdi's original design called for a male "Colossus", but he chose instead to represent "Liberty" as a classic female European "Victory" (not with a sword, but with a torch) so as to represent everything "opposite" of European ideals.

Emma Lazareth's poem tells it all:
.. note how it captures everything negative
about Europe and everything positive about America.

"The Modern Colossus"

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

[thin lizzy]

You cannot find anything to support the claim because there isn't any. Lady Liberty was a gift from the French and under no circumstances would anyone demand that the gift be changed. That would be extremely rude.

Facebook? Hardly a credible source.

[Will Nickel]

The Statue of Liberty was a gift to America from France. It does not and never did appear as a black woman.

[ceridd]

And here we go again.........

The French gave America this magnificent gift because they had been inspired by both the American Revolution and the Constitution/Bill of Rights during their own rebellion against rule by a Monarchy.

It is a Neoclassical sculpture, and Bartholdi would never have ruined his Work with ANY facial type which was incongruent to his ART.

Also, in 1884 the majority of the population was Caucasian, as it is today. The French would not present this collosssal gift wearing the face of any but the majority race. It would have been rude and bizzare.

[staisil]

Bartholdi used Isabella Eugenie Boyer, wife of Isaac Singer, a sewing machine industrialist, as a model for the statue. Her father was a South African candy-maker and her mother was french.

Picture below.

http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/vi...=yfp-t-701