Washington, DC — National Mall & Federal Core
Lincoln Memorial
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922, nearly six decades after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Architect Henry Bacon gave the memorial the form of a classical temple, placing a seated Lincoln inside a ring of columns representing the states of the Union at the time of his death.
But the building’s later history may be as important as its original dedication. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution denied Black contralto Marian Anderson the use of Constitution Hall. With support from Eleanor Roosevelt and others, Anderson instead sang outdoors from these steps before a vast interracial audience. In 1963, the March on Washington culminated here, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech remembered for the phrase “I Have a Dream.”
That means the memorial’s symbolism changed. A monument built to honor the president who preserved the Union and issued the Emancipation Proclamation became a national stage on which Black Americans demanded that the country fulfill promises it had not kept.
Read the place in both directions: inside, Lincoln is monumentalized by the nation; outside, citizens repeatedly use Lincoln’s symbolic authority to address the nation. The memorial is not merely about 1865. It is about the long political afterlife of emancipation.