I sure hope you meant to use the past tense, because in that very Wikipedia article I linked it says:

"Frederick Douglass spoke as the keynote speaker at the dedication service on April 14, 1876, with President Ulysses S. Grant in attendance.[13] John Cromwell, a Howard University historian, who was in the audience, reported that Douglass said the statue "showed the Negro on his knees when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom.""