Important Events Occurring At The Site
Several events of national importance in American history have occurred within the boundaries of the Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site. Pennsylvania Avenue in particular is the focal point for a great many politically important parades and protests.
A number of these historic events have been assassinations or funerals. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre in 1865. President James A. Garfield was shot in the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Passenger Terminal on July 2, 1881, by Charles J. Guiteau; he died 79 days later on September 19. Prior to its designation as a historic site, six presidential funeral processions had traversed Pennsylvania Avenue, the last being President John F. Kennedy's in 1963.
The site has also been the location of major military celebrations. In May 1865, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the Tennessee marched along Pennsylvania Avenue in a "Grand Review" before newly-sworn President Andrew Johnson in celebration of the end of the American Civil War. More than 200,000 soldiers passed in review. The procession was so massive it took two full days for both armies to pass. Admiral George Dewey, hero of the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War, also led a parade up the avenue in 1899 after the United States' victory in that conflict. General John J. Pershing led the American Expeditionary Force in review up Pennsylvania Avenue in 1919 after the conclusion of World War I.
The area has also been the site of several important political protests. A protest march of 400 unemployed workers led by the populist Jacob Coxey occurred on Pennsylvania Avenue on April 30, 1894. The group became known as Coxey's Army, and this march was both the first significant popular protest march on Washington and also the first to receive national news coverage. On March 3, 1913, Alice Paul and led the National American Woman Suffrage Association (a women's rights organization and precursor to the League of Women Voters) in a parade up Pennsylvania Avenue in which they demanded the right to vote. The association was the largest and most important organization in the fight for women's suffrage in the United States. The march was a critical event in the successful fight for the right to vote. The women's rights march was strongly opposed by government officials, so when the association won the right to march it set a precedent under which almost any group could march on Pennsylvania Avenue. This precedent was exercised 12 years later. On August 7, 1925, about 40,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan marched on Pennsylvania Avenue. The march signified the height of the Klan's power in the United States, even as it was about to lose much of its strength.
Another major demonstration on the avenue led to tragedy. In June 1932, thousands of homeless World War I veterans, their families, and their supporters occupied the recently-condemned assemblage of buildings at the Federal Triangle construction site between 6th and 9th Streets NW as part of the Bonus March on the capital to win better veterans' benefits. When the "Bonus Army" was granted the right to march down Pennsylvania Avenue, it transformed the protestors in the eyes of most Americans from rabble-rousers to patriots seeking fairness. On July 28, 1932, President Herbert Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to remove the Bonus Army from the site. At 4:45 p.m., MacArthur led a battalion of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and six battle tanks (commanded by Major George S. Patton) down Pennsylvania Avenue to remove the Bonus Army. More than 20,000 civil service workers (leaving their offices for the day) watched as the U.S. Army attacked its own veterans. A Bonus marcher was killed on the site of the Apex Building, and the Federal Triangle site was cleared of the Bonus Army.
The site carries such importance that on occasion the mere threat of a march down Pennsylvania Avenue has been able to secure political change. For example, in 1941 the labor and civil rights leader A. Phillip Randolph proposed a march on Washington, D.C., by 100,000 African American men to pressure the United States government into establishing protections against discrimination. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to persuade Randolph to call off the march, worried it would harm defense mobilization, but Randolph refused. Roosevelt subsequently issued Executive Order 8802, which established the Fair Employment Practices Committee and banned discrimination in defense contracts. The march was called off. Historian Andrew E. Kersten has called Randolph's March on Washington "the most significant nonevent in American history."
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