The monument honors the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who led the country from 1861 to 1865 and is often considered its greatest president.
Lincoln, who fought to end slavery while preserving the nation, led the country during the Civil War between the United States and 11 southern states that had seceded from the union.
The memorial was also built to heal the painful divisions caused by the war more than 50 years later. Those divisions, including racism, remain today.
“White southerners saw him as a despot,” said Kate Masur, a historian at Northwestern University.
“Over time, particularly in the late 1880s and later, Lincoln’s reputation among white Southerners began to improve. So the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial represents reconciliation between white Northerners and white Southerners, but it excluded African-Americans,” he told the VOA.
Every year, the Lincoln Memorial attracts millions of visitors who marvel at its grandeur.
The exterior resembles the Parthenon, the famous ancient Greek temple. Inside is a 20-foot-tall marble statue of Lincoln.
“The monument is so beautiful,” said Hannah Wagner, a college student from Pennsylvania. “Abraham Lincoln was an incredible president and I respect everything he did to help the country.”
“There are words etched into the walls of his iconic speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, which he delivered at the site of the greatest battle of the Civil War,” explained renowned Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, director of the Public Policy Institute at the Roosevelt House at Hunter College.
“There are also words from his second inaugural address in which he describes national guilt over slavery as the reason for the war” and tells people not to act with malice but with charity towards one another, Holzer told the VOA.
“His Literary Ability [de Lincoln] It was a great surprise and he gave the most beautiful speeches,” said Ted Widmer, a professor at the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York.
“Lincoln had a great ability to connect with the American people,” Widmer told the VOA.
“There’s a hushed tone, a bow, inside the monument as people look at the statue or read the speeches,” said Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington. “I think it speaks to the power and importance that Lincoln still has after all these years.”
Visitor Adjo Kotey from Ghana was in awe. “President Lincoln was a hero to me because he helped free so many black people,” he said.
“Although Lincoln opened the door to the eventual elimination of slavery in this country, African Americans were also very involved in their own liberation,” said historian Edna Greene Medford, author of the book “Lincoln and Emancipation”during an interview with the VOA.
Ironically, even though Lincoln was known as the “Great Emancipator,” the memorial’s 1922 dedication ceremony was segregated.
“Black attendees were removed from the front row and taken to a separate section in the back,” Holzer said, adding that the only black speaker that day, Tuskegee Institute President Robert Russa Moton, had his comments censored. .
From that day forward, the Lincoln Memorial has served as a backdrop for civil rights and other protests.
In 1939, famous singer Marian Anderson was granted permission to perform there after she was denied the right to a nearby venue because she was black. Her concert attracted 75,000 people.
Then, during the August 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Just over 100 years earlier, on January 1, 1863, Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforth shall be, free.”
Today, other protests have included Vietnam War veterans, Americans with disabilities, and people who identify as LBGTQ.
James Haggerty and Conrad Mitchell were married at the Lincoln Memorial after same-sex marriage was legalized in Washington in 2009.
“After waiting years before we could get married, we thought this would be the perfect place to show how important he was to us,” Haggerty said. “It was a really special day,” added Michell.
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