FOR THE PEOPLE
THE BRAND-NEW LINCOLN MEMORIAL should have inspired a dedication ceremony of, by, and for the people—black as well as white. To adorn its interior, 72-year-old Yankee sculptor Daniel Chester French had created a magisterial but accessible colossus designed to beckon admirers of all backgrounds. And the inscription French had commissioned for the tablet behind the massive statue made no exceptions based on race:
“In this temple / as in the hearts of the people / for whom he saved the Union / the memory of Abraham Lincoln / is enshrined forever.”
But the May 22, 1922, dedication, long a dream for Washington’s countless Abraham Lincoln admirers, instead turned into a nightmare for the citizens Lincoln had long been credited with helping the most.
African Americans arrived at the Greek-style temple rising from Washington’s once-swampy West Potomac Park early that hot dedication day, hoping for places at the front of a throng that eventually swelled to 50,000. For them, Lincoln was still Father Abraham, the Great Emancipator. But before the pageant got underway, on instructions from the Southern-born superintendent of the Office of Public Buildings, soldiers armed with guns and bayonets rousted the early arrivals from their chairs and herded them into a “colored section” at the far edge of the grounds, “roped in from the rest of the audience.” Aggressive bullying, one white Marine corpsman boasted crudely at the scene, was “the only way you can handle these ‘niggers.’”
To add insult to injury, a group applauded the fact that “two groups of bowed men in blue and gray had seats to right and left of a flag for and against the existence of which they once did battle.” But an African-American eyewitness saw cruel irony in the fact that “Jim-Crowism of the grossest sort” had been practiced by “the hypocrites of the great nation” on a day devoted to Lincoln. The seating anomalies made it clear, he complained, that “the spoils have gone to the conquered, not the conquerors.”
