A Glimpse at History

On May 30, 1922 Cheif Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft, chairman of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, presided over the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. The Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, founded on the day of Lincoln’s death to uphold his ideals, planned the elaborate ceremony, attended by President Warren G. harding, Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln in his finl public appearance, and Civil War veterans from both the Union and Confederate seated on wooden chairs in the front row. It was a crowd of men in straw hats and women with parasols all assembled that day to hear Dr. Robert Moton, President of Tuckegee Institute, the African-American university in Alabama who was the keynote speaker. However, all African-American dignitaries were escorted by white Marines to the “Colored Only” section. This alone proved the country still had a long way to go to acheive true equality.

This year on May 30th President Barack Obama will address another crowd assembled on the same National Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial and there will be no segregated seating. “We want to be able to showcase the diversity of the nation, celebrate equality, and show what’s happened in the country since Lincoln’s time until today, ” says Jennifer Rosenfeld, deputy executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. The rededication ceremony is part of a trio of free public events at the Lincoln Memorial that are apart of the yearlong nationwide series commemorating the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth on February 12, 1809.

If you scroll to some of my earlier entries….I first reported on this last year as up and coming events.

Hope some of you are able to make it!

Have a Historical day!!!!!!!!

Filed under: Historical Travel suggestions by Savannah Meade