Events
Located at the base of the Lincoln Memorial's steps, the Reflecting Pool area has been the site of many historic events, including:
- In 1939, singer Marian Anderson was denied permission to perform in Constitution Hall in Washington, because she was African American. An open air concert was arranged on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, with a crowd of over 75,000 people around the Reflecting Pool area.
- In 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom used the area for its Civil Rights rally. It was there that Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered to a crowd of a quarter million people standing around (and in) the Reflecting Pool.
- In 2009, We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial was held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. An estimated 400,000 attendees watched from around the pool.
- In 2010, the restoration project began.
- As of 2012, the restoration project is done and the pool was reopened on August 31.
Read more about this topic: Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“That’s the great danger of sectarian opinions, they always accept the formulas of past events as useful for the measurement of future events and they never are, if you have high standards of accuracy.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
““The ideal reasoner,” he remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)