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Lerone Bennett, Jr; Lincoln not hero of legend

Speaking in Cornell's Sage Chapel to a crowd of about 40 people as part of the Sage Wednesday Series, Bennett said people have made a hero of a man who doesn't deserve it — Abraham Lincoln.

"To tell the truth, history was not reinvented by Lincoln, but against Lincoln," Bennett said, "not by his acts but by acts he opposed."

Bennett worked for Ebony magazine as an editor for five decades and is the author of 10 books on U.S. racial history. He was born in Mississippi in 1928, graduated from Morehouse College and participated in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. His book, "Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream," questions Lincoln's role as the Great Emancipator.

Bennett said Wednesday that Lincoln's identity in American history has been warped.

"He was not a great emancipator, he was not a small emancipator, he was not even a regular-sized emancipator," Bennett said, drawing laughs.

"The Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves; the 13th Amendment to the Constitution freed the slaves. If you meet a historian in Ithaca who says the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves, call the police — because you are either dealing with a charlatan or an innocent who needs to be protected from himself."

The Lincoln Bennett described opposed equal rights for blacks and Latinos, and supported the deportation of all blacks living in the states. As a lawyer in Illinois, Lincoln sent runaway slaves back to slavery, he said.

He said it is his mission to open a dialogue on Lincoln and bring about the acceptance of the real person.

"I'm not saying it for black people alone," he said. "You can't understand Lincoln, you can't understand the Civil War, you can't understand religion, you can't understand the American dilemma unless you understand the joy and pain and the glory of the black odyssey in this land."
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