The Lincoln Memorial turns 100 years old on Memorial Day 2022, marking a century since the nation’s most beloved and emotive tribute has stood at the western end of the Mall in Washington, DC.
In the century since its dedication on May 30, 1922, the neoclassical structure, honoring the nation’s 16th president, has provided the stage for some of America’s most important historic speeches, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered at the Memorial in 1963.
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The Washington Post noted:
Monday marks the 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Memorial on May 30, 1922, an event attended by thousands, including President Warren G. Harding and Lincoln’s 78-year-old son, Robert, on what was then called Decoration Day.
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The lone Black speaker was Robert Russa Moton, head of the Tuskegee Institute. He had written a speech suggesting that the “unfinished” work Lincoln spoke of in the Gettysburg Address remained unfinished for African Americans.
Holzer wrote that the White House frowned on what he had written, and told him to tone it down or lose his chance to speak. Moton changed the speech, but ended it: “I somehow believe that all of us, Black and White, both North and South, are going to strive on to finish the work which [Lincoln] so nobly began to make America an example for the world of equal justice and equal opportunity.”
The memorial includes quotes from Lincoln, including the concise but moving words of his Second Inaugural Address: “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Though venerated by Americans, the Lincoln Memorial was among the many monuments vandalized during the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, with the phrase “Y’all Not Tired Yet?” spray-painted on a wall near the steps leading to the memorial.
Recent presidents have used the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop. President Donald Trump used it to hold his “Salute to America” celebration on July 4, 2019. President Joe Biden visited it after his inauguration, violating his own mask policy.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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