We Will Now Rejoin Your Civil War (Already In Progress)

The long struggles started by the Civil War
continue in America's streets even today, from
St. Louis, Missouri to Staten Island, New York.
And the protest sign is still the greatest weapon,
like this example at the Newseum in Washington.

I celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a mouse and keyboard. I love diving neck deep in historical documentation for no good reason. Falling down the research hole can be so much fun, particularly when it's looking for one elusive piece of evidence.

This time, it was chasing an elusive section of a United Auto Workers protest sign used at the March on Washington in 1963. I found a photo of the corner, a chunk of text.

The idea that the Civil War led toward the Civil Rights movement 100 years later is almost painfully obvious. The fitful, ineffective and aborted experiment that was Reconstruction laid the groundwork upon which Randolph and Rustin erected the grand protest of 1963. Everyone on the rostrum called back to Lincoln, to the Civil War, to Emancipation.

The March on Washington was a non-violent battle in the long Civil War, just another skirmish like the ones fought in Gettysburg or Sharpsburg or Chattanooga. And everyone on the street knew it.

From what I can tell, the "official" posters produced by the march organizers, the signs announcing "We March For...Now!" and "We Demand... Now!" far outnumbered any others. But there were others. Some were hand-drawn. Some were banners brought by delegations, announcing that this church or that labor union was here to be heard.

And then there are the UAW signs. The language is far more strident than any of the others. The language is biting, snide and sarcastic. It's the language of a people oppressed for far too long to worry about being polite.

The March on Washington in August 1963 was
a definite echo of the Civil War.

The sign I went searching for underlined the 100-year disconnect in American society. And finally I found the whole elusive poster in an Associated Press photograph published by the Washington Post. "We seek the freedom in 1963," the UAW poster reads, "promised in 1863."

Emancipation was incomplete. It was never fully deployed, thanks in part to the failure of America's reconstruction experiment in 1877. And the March on Washington was just another battle of the Civil War.

I carefully traced the poster into a vector image. I'm a compulsive history. I collect things. Luckily, in this modern age, that doesn't always mean stuffing photocopied images into filing cabinets in the office. My filing cabinets are digital and they take up less real estate.

But to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday this week, I wanted to share that poster with you, along with a few more that I've been converting over. They're hosted below on Flickr, in vibrant color and at high resolution. Use them however you see fit: in a classroom, in a frame on your wall or perhaps in the streets protesting today. After all, the African-American Civil Rights movement is still going on. And so is our Civil War.

The Willard Hotel: Let Us Die To Make Men Free

The Willard, circa 1919
the Smithsonian

Everyday I head into work, I pass by the Willard InterContinental building between 15th and 14th streets NW in downtown D.C. Even though Washington, D.C. has changed greatly since the Civil War, the Willard has, in its various different forms and structures, always been there – since even before the Civil War. In its long storied history, the Willard has been there for its fair share of historical events.

It was there when Abraham Lincoln was whisked into the city from Baltimore, under the cover of darkness, on February 23, 1861. The president-elect’s traveling companions, hearing the rumors and fearing assassination attempts, quietly escorted Lincoln to a suite of rooms he stayed in before his official inauguration on March 4. The Willard was also the scene of a last ditch peace conference earlier in February, as former President John Tyler presided over a group of delegates from all over the country, except the deep south, hoping to avoid war. Of course, we all know, the conference failed, as all the while southerners were meeting in Montgomery, Alabama to form the Confederacy.

My favorite historical happening that occurred at the Willard during the Civil War is none of those. It was a simple act, after all: A woman merely wrote down some lyrics to a popular melody after she awoke early from her slumber. Those lyrics, though, were none other than the tune, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the woman was none other than the famous American poet, abolitionist, and writer, Julia Ward Howe.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on. 

She penned those famous lines during one November morning, or at least, that’s how the story goes. While many remember the first couple of stanzas, one of my favorite stanzas actually comes near the end:

He died to make us free....
the LOC

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on. 

Let us die to make men free. That pretty much sums up the entire war right there. Though, the story doesn’t exactly stop with Howe. A little more than 100 hundred years later, another man on a quest to make men free, stayed at the Willard. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent a night at the Willard devoting the evening to polishing the “I Have a Dream” speech in his hotel room. The next day, standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, King evoked Lincoln’s imagery and words in one of the greatest demonstrations for human rights in United States history. King, like Lincoln and the many others who passed before him, would ultimately die to make men free as well.