Sunrise with Lincoln and Meanings with Chuck

From darkness to light.

I walked 150 years on Monday. I walked across a great chasm of history.

Physically, I walked from the Arlington Cemetery Metro Station across Memorial Bridge, then continued down the National Mall to 4th Street, where I witnessed one of the most peculiar regularly scheduled celebrations that Americans observe: the Inauguration of the President.

But along the way, I met the past alive on the landscape. I watched the sky turn from murky black into hopeful, bright pink and orange sitting alongside the savior of the nation. Lincoln and I watched as the early light of sunrise silhouetted the brightly-lit Washington Monument. We watched the dark melt to light, the chaos and unknown melt into bright order.

The two of us sat on the steps of his Memorial and watched his nation. It's a nation he could have never dreamt of and yet one he saw clearly in his greatest hopes. The man in the White House, Lincoln's house, looks like the slaves that Lincoln helped begin to truly free 150 years ago. His skin is the same dusky hue.

Meeting him on the street in 1858 in Washington, you might have assumed he was some man's property.

But meeting him on the street in 2013, you can only assume he truly is his own man, as are we all, and you would instantly know he is the leader of a vibrant and constantly evolving nation.

The man who lives in the White House looks like the slaves did, in this, the Sesquicentennial of their freedom. And Lincoln smiled down from his seat in his Memorial. A land he could never imagine, and dreamt of every night.

Reflecting on war and meaning.

I left my friend the Emancipator and dove forward in history. I stooped down to shake hands with Dr. King on the spot where he begged to cash a check of freedom. I walked past the wall which chronicles the war he fought with all his soul to keep from killing more of America's sons, just as Lincoln had hoped to do a century before when he chose to free a race of men. I glanced back and saw a young songbird, singing, "My Country Tis' of Thee," from a high perch. And I watched as she melted into an old woman, still singing for freedom and equality and to a Lord she knew held her in his hands.

I peered a the line that marks old from new on the side of Washington's Monument, the scar of a war and the resolve of a people to do honor to their father. And next door I saw the foundation of a new museum dedicated to the race of people that that father held in bondage: irony is telling.

Then I stepped onto The Mall and democracy came alive. Walking down the long muddy front yard of the nation, flanking both sides of the path, a chorus of, "good morning." Over and over. High-fives and handshakes from strangers. This wasn't a strange place. We were being welcomed home.

And then Senator Schumer began to speak. His words were brief, but powerful. They were solid and heavy, they soared like a light dove on the wing.

They were interpretive.

I've placed a full transcript of Chuck's short address in the new 'Sources and Miscellaneous' tab above. They're worth another read if you heard them, and a first read if you didn't.

Chuck spoke like a seasoned interpreter, carving meaning where none existed before for the stunned audience. The black smudge on the skyline, the fuzzy statue at the crest of the Capitol Dome, became something more.

Welcome home.

It wasn't bronze. It was resolve. It wasn't a sculpture. It was the comeuppance of slave-set-free Phillip Reid. That statue, a metal representation of Freedom became in a flash the embodiment of Americans', "stubborn adherence to the notion that we are all created equal and that we deserve nothing less than a great republic worthy of our consent."

In fewer than 5 minutes, the moment had passed. The celebration continued. But Charles Schumer had taken those moments and used them to transform that meaningless statue, to ignite it like a torch in the soul. That's what interpretation is: we, at our best, take the meaningless and turn it into a beacon to guide the heart and comfort the mind. And bronze became lighthouse Monday morning.

"So," Schumer concluded, "it is a good moment to gaze upward and behold the statue of freedom at the top of the Capitol Dome." And what could the statue provide? "It is a good moment to gain strength and courage and humility from those who were determined to complete the half-finished dome."

Strength, courage, humility, drawn from a simple hunk of bronze atop a cast-iron dome masquerading as marble. And yet, there it stands: strength, courage, humility... and Lincoln's wildest dreams fulfilled.

"...our hearts tell us there is something else out there.": Prowling the Halls of the MIB

In the basement corridor of the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C. is the most beautiful painting I've even seen. I've gotten the chance on a couple of occasions, while visiting the Department of the Interior Headquarters for meetings and whatnot for work to wander down outside of the cafeteria to see the mural. It is pure beauty, mostly forgotten and ignored by the folks who work in that building everyday. I get these weird looks while I stand in awe of the massive canvas, like I shouldn't stop and stare. I don't care. I take pictures. I gawk. My mouth hangs agape.

An Incident in Contemporary American Life by Mitchell Jamieson, installed in 1942, is my favorite painting. And true to form, my love has as much to do with the subject as the art. The floor-to-ceiling mural, so vivid you could step into it's muted colors, is an amazing window into the past. And that moment is a quintessentially American day in 1939 when Harold Ickes stood up for equality of opportunity. He offered up the Lincoln Memorial as an altar of freedom from which Marian Anderson would sing after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her use their stage because of the color of her skin.

But Ickes and Anderson have nothing to do with this painting. If you look at this massive image of the painting from the DOI website, you can see that the black songbird and the Secretary are specks on the stage in the distance.

The painting is about the act of listening, of observing. The painting is about the people, the ordinary people, who witness grand moments in history. They're white, they're black. Unlike the crowd at the dedication of that vast temple to liberty, the crowd Anderson's concert was integrated. And in each face, a story starts to bubble to the surface. This man looks on in hope, that one bows his head in sorrow. This woman eagerly listens to the wafting music, that gazes into the eyes of her child. Is she dreaming of a future? Or is she fearing that the world he grows up in won't be much different than the one she has?

History is made by people, not the ones on stages, but the ones in the crowds. And every member of that crowd has a story. A painting is not am image, it is only paint on canvas in coordinated brush strokes. The mural of history is exactly the same. If we pause to look at all those brush strokes at once, give them all their individual due in the grand larger picture, history becomes beautiful and complete.

And if we put our noses right up to that canvas, like I did last time I was in the basement outside of the cafeteria, and look at one of those simple brushstroke, it too speaks volumes.

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.

"The People for Whom He Saved the Union": Ninety Years Ago in DC

Reading the official Facebook page of one of my favorite history authors yesterday, I saw a pithy note about a "day of note." Ninety years ago this week, President Warren Harding dedicated the Lincoln Memorial at the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

If ever there was a landscape where the story of the Civil War and the story of Civil Rights have collided in technicolor majesty, it is on those steps. I pointed out as much a couple weeks ago. And author Sarah Vowell pointed out yesterday the first time that Memorial was the scene of Civil Rights strife - the very first day it was open. From its beginning, the temple dedicated to Lincoln has been the scene of conflict over the paltry detail of the color of the skin of some Americans, the very, "people for whom he saved the Union."

It's a throw away line, the detail that the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial was a segregated affair. I've used it as a stark underline of the point that the Civil War was the beginning of an end to racial strife, not an end fully achieved. But to be honest, I've never dug that deeply into the hearts and words of the black folks who experienced that ultimate snubbing, that theft of the Great Emancipator's shrine from under their noses.

The snub was palpable to Black communities across the country, both those dotting the District and those lying hundreds of miles away. In Saint Paul, Minnesota, The Appeal indignantly told its predominately black readership that, "Colored Americans were segregated in the seating of the audience during the dedication."

The Memorial as it appeared on the
front page of The Afro-American

Shelby Davidson, the executive secretary of the Washington, D.C. branch of the NAACP sent a somewhat-public letter to the organization's national headquarters. Dignitaries. white and black, were given tickets for the event's platform. "Platform seats reserved for white were in chairs and within hearing distance of the speakers," The Appeal reprinted Davidson's words on June 10th, "while back of those seats were those reserved for colored people, roped off from those occupied by the whites and placed about a block from the Memorial in the grass and weeds, with rough hewn benches without backs or supports."

Adding insult to injury was the fact that flanking the black dignitaries. "placed at the entrance to these seats were marines who were distasteful, discourteous and abusive even to swearing in the presence of our women who accompanied their husbands to the celebration." Baltimore's Afro-American on June 2nd recounted the experience of Whitfield McKinley, "well known local real estate dealer," who was ordered by one of the armed Marines to sit on his assigned bench. When McKinley responded that he'd, "think about it," the Marine gruffly responded, "Well think damned quick."

The Afro-American, with no lack of bravado, recounted how, "a near riot ensued and the crowd demanded the transfer of the marine elsewhere." When a nearby officer declared that the Marine were, "the only thing to do to keep the colored people in their place, twenty-one persons arose as one and left the enclosure."

The Saint Paul Appeal, addressing African-American citizens of the state who had sent her sons eastward to be slaughtered at places like Fredericksburg and Gettysburg fighting for the freedom of the slave, noted that, "it is a wonder that Lincoln did not turn over in his grave."

In Salt Lake City, Utah, The Broad Ax told its black readership that the Washington branch of the NAACP had petitioned President Warren Harding to unseat the Superintendent of Capital Grounds and Buildings, the man responsible for the segregation of public spaces in the District. The incident at the Lincoln Memorial wasn't the first, but, "the second of its kind in less than two months, the first being the placing of segregation placards in Rock Creek Park." The Broad Ax reprinted the NAACP's stern warning to the Republican Harding:

It would be a rude awakening and a painful disillusionment to us to realize that the party was approving and following a practice which was an incident to the institution of chattel slavery.

For black citizens across America reading similar details in their own local newspapers, the fact that the Lincoln Memorial was segregated spoke all too loudly. It told them where the White House and the rest of America stood on their equality. The promises which Lincoln made in 1863, through a Proclamation destroying slavery and an immortal address Lincoln gave at Gettysburg, rang hollow and empty as they echoed through the halls of that marble temple. Lincoln didn't need to be standing over a kneeling slave for 1922's black folks to see what their predecessor Frederick Douglass had noted in 1876: that Lincoln was, "preeminently the white man's President." White America had gone out of their way to claim him as their own, snatched from a black populace questing for some icon around which to rally.

If we stop imagining the Civil War in 1865, we aren't getting the whole story. If we stop in 1877, we're only a few steps down the highway of the Civil War. The dedication of the Lincoln Memorial was a battlefield in 1922, in some sense just like Shiloh or Petersburg, where men faced off over the momentous concept of freedom and liberty. This week the 90th anniversary of that battle of wits, minds and words passed by like an historical speed bump. How many more opportunities to remember the other battles of the Civil War, the ones that took place in the hundred years after the white men put down their swords and shook hands, will we leave by the wayside before we realize they are integral parts of the Civil War story as well? Wars don't end, they linger for decades, even centuries. No place was that more clear than on a day in late May 1922, when the war erupted once again on the Mall in Washington.

"Sit Down Together at a Table of Brotherhood": Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

The Stone of Hope: a kind King

As we walked along the tidal basin back toward the Smithsonian Metro Station, I began to cry. Just a few tears, here and there, welled in my eyes. It wasn't the monument or the quotes. It wasn't the deep feelings I had looking at his face. It was overhearing a simple conversation. Two 30-something black women in a group of tourists were talking to one another about photos.

"You need to get your picture taken, girl," one asks the other.
"Why?" she responds, "I've got plenty of pictures."
"To prove you were here," the first woman responds.

That hit me. This place was special and meaningful, far above the power of even its creators to see. The very act of visiting the huge stone monolith needed to be documented and shared with those at home, like evidence of a hajj to a sacred spot where all yearn to stand.

During our visit we walked past an older couple, old enough to have been dating as King embarked on his final campaign for the sanitation workers of Memphis in '68. The woman pushed the gentleman in a wheelchair, both looking up reverently at King's face as they moved forward. His black hand rested on her white skin perched gently above his shoulder.

A Family and a King quote

In front of the monument a huge crowd gathered. Many were black, many were white. Everyone seemed enthusiastic to be there. They were elated just to be standing on that spot. Above the crowd arms reached, holding aloft smart phones and cameras.

Along the walls behind King, next to quotes about strength and weakness, about war and peace, about violence and justice, families posed to have their photos taken. Others studied the quotes, pondering for long minutes. Along the pathways, lining every inch of curb, groups sat. They were talking.

Stepping into the Lincoln Memorial is often like a walking into a wall of silence. Crossing the plain of the columns on the east front, the air becomes deathly still in reverence to Lincoln's gaze. But walking onto the plaza surrounding King's feet, a low murmur permeates the scene. It is not irreverent. It is simply people being people. Some I overheard discussing King or their lives or the meaning of the place. Others were planning where to eat dinner or hashing out the best route to their next stop. Some were simply taking a moment to sit a breathe, looking across the tidal basin toward the white dome in the distance. But everyone was using the park, not simply soaking it up as a static visual landscape to be consumed. They were active participants in the place.

Walking around the site, my girlfriend Jess noticed something I missed. "Look at all the disposable cameras," she remarked. She was right. There were so many people not with the latest Nikon or Kodak camera slung around their neck, or an iPhone snapping quick shots of King, but with $5 and $10 disposable film cameras. "Those people aren't here 'cause they want to be," Jess mused, "they're here because they need to be. They saved money for the Greyhound down from where ever because they had to see this. It is a need, not a want."

Not Diversity: Only A Manifestation of America

All around us, people were there because they each knew they had to be. This diverse crowd was wonderfully unlike anything I've experienced in a National Park before. The crowd didn't feel artificial like it usually does when I visit Civl War parks, with the visitors around me being very white and typically old. It didn't feel like the Martin Luther King Jr. home in Atlanta, where I felt what I can only describe as the good kind of discomfort of being the only white person in the entire park on the first day of my two-day visit. Comedian Stephen Colbert has called Washington, D.C., "the chocolate city with a marshmallow center." The neighborhoods ringing The Mall and the Federal center of the city are predominately black. The crowds on The Mall and in the Smithsonian museums (not to mention the representatives in the hallowed halls on The Hill) are predominately white. Stepping out of Smithsonian Metro Station onto the Mall or walking the few blocks down while waiting for a pull time at NARA, l'Enfant's "grand avenue" feels too lily white for a city with such rich diversity teeming in every street to the north and east.

But at the King memorial, it doesn't feel artificial. It doesn't feel like I'm alone and different. It doesn't feel like anyone is missing. The only thing surrounding me at the King Memorial this past Saturday was what defines America: ordinary people of every stripe and any color.

The most amazing thing, though, is looking beyond King's gaze. Across the tidal basin lies the Jefferson Memorial. On one side of the water stands the author of the immortal, "promissory note," that men are entitled to, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." On the other side, just a stone's throw and two centuries away, stands the man who made it his life's goal to see that the, "promissory note," would be cashed for a race of men yearning to breathe free.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..."