A LITTLE KNOWN "FACT" ABOUT THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL SCULPTURE

This is the LINCOLN MEMORIAL in WASHINGTON, DC. Take a GOOD look at ABRAHAM LINCOLN's HANDS..........

Got it?

What do you see?

Has anyone ever told you the meaning of the placement of his hands?

After I published a Blog post (July 4, 2019) about our recent EVENING TOUR OF WASHINGTON DC MONUMENTS AND MEMORIALS, a friend  (thank you DONNA!) emailed me and said "Did you notice ABRAHAM LINCOLN's hands?"  I had no idea what she was talking about.  

She explained to me that the sculptor, DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH (1920) designed Lincoln's hands to display AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE - his left hand is an "A" and his right hand is the "L" - as he's looking at it, his hands form his initials.

Now THAT is something, isn't it?!

JOAN

From Wikipedia -

Sculptural features[edit]

The sculptor's possible use of sign language is speculated, as the statue's left hand forms an "A" while the right hand portrays an "L"

The sculpture has been at the center of two urban legends. Some have claimed that the face of General Robert E. Lee was carved onto the back of Lincoln's head,^[26] and looks back across the Potomac toward his former home, Arlington House, now within the bounds of Arlington National Cemetery. Another popular legend is that Lincoln is shown using sign language to represent his initials, with his left hand shaped to form an "A" and his right hand to form an "L", the president's initials. The National Park Service denies both legends.^[26]

However, historian Gerald Prokopowicz writes that, while it is not clear that sculptor Daniel Chester French intended Lincoln's hands to be formed into sign language versions of his initials, it is possible that French did intend it, because he was familiar with American Sign Language, and he would have had a reason to do so, that is, to pay tribute to Lincoln for having signed the federal legislation giving Gallaudet University, a university for the deaf, the authority to grant college degrees.^[27] The National Geographic Society's publication "Pinpointing the Past in Washington, D.C." states that Daniel Chester French had a son who was deaf and that the sculptor was familiar with sign language.^[28][29] Historian James A. Percoco has observed that, although there are no extant documents showing that French had Lincoln's hands carved to represent the letters "A" and "L" in American Sign Language, "I think you can conclude that it's reasonable to have that kind of summation about the hands."^[30]