If you stand directly in front of Abraham Lincoln’s marble statue in the Lincoln Memorial and look east, you witness an eclipse, of sorts – the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol align perfectly, so as to obscure the Capitol from view completely. It’s a beautiful architectural feat, aligning three of our democracy’s most hallowed structures in a row. They stand unified and in concert.
As I write this, I’m sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, witnessing this “monumental eclipse.” This is my first trip to Washington in nearly four years, and being in the city again brings back a sense of nostalgia. But accompanying the sweet is a strange tint of somberness. The Capitol is still surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and flanked by thousands of National Guardsman. The Washington Monument, usually bustling with tours and visitors, is closed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. And the Lincoln Memorial, while continuing to shine as a beacon of our nation’s aspiration for equality for all, seems to shine less brightly after a year that exposed how far we truly are from that ideal.
It’s a trifecta of troubles – represented by three symbols of a nation that aspires to more than any other, yet still progresses toward its promises.
Filmmaker and historian Ken Burns recently said that the U.S. is fighting three viruses simultaneously: COVID-19, misinformation and white supremacy. Burns seems to have evidence for his hypothesis. COVID-19 has taken the lives of 450,000 Americans to date, and much of our nation – including the doors to the Washington Monument – remains shuttered because of it. Misinformation, including the lie of a stolen election and the aggregate mistrust in our institutions, led to a siege on the Capitol and the death of four more. And white supremacy, alongside its father, racism, as illustrated and amplified by recent events, continues its rampant spread.
To my right, the sun begins to set on the Potomac and the air becomes noticeably colder. While the dozen or so tourists who linger at the memorial begin packing up and retreating down the steps, Lincoln sits unfazed. To his right, his Gettysburg Address is etched into the wall; to his left, his Second Inaugural Address stands engraved. I walk to the Gettysburg Address – the shorter of the two – and begin to read.
The fragility of the 1863 American democracy is apparent in his words. He speaks of the Civil War as a test – testing whether a democracy, that great experiment, “can long endure.” He speaks of the soldiers who gave their life at Gettysburg and denoted their sacrifice, not his speech, as the true act of consecration on that field.
I pause at the penultimate paragraph. “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not be taken from the earth.”
I walk to the other side of the hall. His Second Inaugural Address has a much different tone. He speaks candidly of the Confederacy and of slavery. He speaks of their motives – and how both sides of the war “read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.”
To Lincoln, it seems, slavery was not just an evil to be purged. It was a debt to be paid. 250 years of unrequited toil was the price – to “be paid by another.”
I return to my seat at the top of the steps, aligned with Lincoln’s gaze, the monumental eclipse in view. Have we, as a nation, repaid the price for slavery? If so, what is the explanation for rampant inequality between Blacks and whites that outlives slavery by nearly two centuries? What of Black college graduates, on average, having one-third less wealth than white high school dropouts? What of the average median family wealth for white Americans being $171,000, and for Black Americans, $17,600?
It took a trio of viruses – the harsh inequities of a pandemic, the suffocating hold of racism and white supremacy, the epidemic of years of misinformation – for our nation, and for me, to lift an eye to our true state of equality. The American Dream may live on, but the American Promise continues unfulfilled for many.
The equality Lincoln sought was not forced or feigned, but innate. “Freedom was not an abstract idea to Abraham Lincoln,” a display at the Lincoln Memorial reads. “It was firmly embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” Above the placard, a quote from Lincoln himself is carved into stone: “I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruits of his labor so far as it in no way interferes with any other man’s rights.” How would Lincoln see our progress today? The descendants of the slaves he freed, and other Black Americans, are certainly free to do as they choose – but what of the fruits of their labor? Is the racial wealth gap a mere anomaly? Free in principle, yet shackled in practice – “Slavery didn’t end in 1865, it just evolved,” lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson has said. In a way, he’s right – the promise of 40 acres and a mule to freed slaves was killed with Lincoln, and instead their descendants were repaid with Reconstruction, with Jim Crow, with separate-but-equal, racist housing policy, mass incarceration, police brutality.
Emancipation is a process, not an event. Equality is the promise. We continue to fight for both. By the time I retreat toward the steps, with Lincoln’s chair at my back, it is dark. The shape of the Washington Monument shines in the ice in the reflecting pool. The Capitol, obscured in the background, continues to be patrolled by armed guards, allowing certified personnel in and keeping the rest of us – we, the people – out.
I wonder what the view is from Lincoln’s marble perch. I’m glad a monumental eclipse obscured his view on Jan. 6, so he did not see our temple of democracy defiled. I’m grateful he doesn’t see the armed guard hawk it today and continue to do so for the coming weeks. I wonder, though, what he can see. Does he see the systemic, racist guard in many of our institutions, bequeathing privilege to some and privation to others? Did he expect his hope of emancipation would still be a work in progress, two centuries later? Is he proud of where we stand as a nation – a Union healing, or a Union faltering?
As is carved above his statue, in this temple, in his temple, “as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.” As I turn and look back upon reaching the bottom step, I realize that Lincoln’s seen it all – perched in a chair above, his marble eyes unshut for a century. He sees a nation striving for equality and stumbling in the process. But on these steps, our nation has found some degree of solace. It saw, on the day of its dedication, Dr. Robert Moton – president of Tuskegee Institute, and forced to sit in a segregated area before his speech – preach of Lincoln’s work “to free a nation as well as a race.”
Decades later, the Rev. Dr. King shared his dream upon these steps – a dream that is still in progress – and the final line of his speech, the words to a hymn, echoed off the pillars: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”
