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A cultural historian marks the anniversary of the first civil rights rally at the Lincoln Memorial, arguing that building the World War Two Memorial will end a significant tradition of demonstrations there. Over its 80-years on the National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial has become the traditional stepping-off point for peaceful demonstrations that have changed America for the better. Preserving this tradition is the best reason not to build the World War Two Memorial on the Mall. The National Park Service official most involved in that project, John Parsons, recently told the New York Times that he wants to keep large demonstrations away from the Mall. The war memorial will do exactly that. Its design and chosen location will forever block the route followed by the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom, when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Protests like it made the Mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial into a shortcut to freedom, when official gates were locked. The story of how that end of the Mall became our nation's highest moral ground clarifies what is now at risk. On August 6, 1926, two thousand African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church members met on the West end of the Mall and invented the civil rights rally. They hoped to heal wounds inflicted at the Lincoln Memorial's 1922 dedication, when African-American invitees were forced into "colored" seating across the road by the Reflecting Pool. Military ushers taunted them with racial epithets -- ironically, in the part of the Lincoln Memorial grounds that the World War Two project will modify and obstruct. Further insult came when dedication officials censored the only African-American speaker, to prevent him from dwelling on emancipation. This accorded with the memorial's design, which deemphasized slavery to avoid offending the white South. The mainstream press was silent, but African-American papers like The Chicago Defender headlined, "Near Fight as Citizens are Jim Crowed: Dedication of Lincoln Memorial Scene of Unpleasantness." Black editorialists urged readers to find a way to rededicate the monument to the unfinished cause of equality. After the 1926 marchers tried to do exactly that, Interior Secretary Hubert Work restricted public assemblies at the site, except on Lincoln's Birthday. The west end of the Mall stayed off limits for the next decade. In 1939, black activists (with the aid of Eleanor Roosevelt) overturned this policy, winning a permit for a Lincoln Memorial recital by Marian Anderson, who had been turned away from Constitution Hall by the explicit "white artists only" policy of the Daughters of the American Revolution. On Easter Sunday, a throng of 75,000 (integrated this time) spilled down the Mall, hugging the edges of the Reflecting Pool to hear and see the great contralto. Finally, an African American had rededicated the Lincoln Memorial for everyone. Public uses alter the intended meanings of all monuments, and the Lincoln Memorial is our greatest example of this. Making it our national soapbox enhanced its symbolism. Who can walk up those steps without hearing the voices of Anderson or King? Americans of all viewpoints have used this monument's platform to address supporters crowded down the narrow, center lane of the Mall. Where else did both the Rev. Billy Graham and the American Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell preach? The site has hosted demonstrations for abortion rights and fetal rights, evangelical services and gay pride events, rallies by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Every president since Jimmy Carter has held an inaugural gala there, basking in a glow of freedom created by more than a hundred protests at the site after 1926. America is better today than it was seventy-five years ago, not only because one generation marched against Hitler, but because several generations have marched down the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial. There is time to move the World War Two Memorial before groundbreaking in December. We should keep our greatest freedom trail open for future generations of freedom fighters. Scott A. Sandage, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, is the author of Forgotten Men: Failure in American Culture, forthcoming from Harvard University Press. |
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