On October 10, 1987, 2,000 same-sex couples pledged their vows in a mass wedding behind the National Museum of Natural History and in front of the Internal Revenue Service building. The location allowed the group to protest the lack of recognition of…

On March 11, 1988, deaf students from Gallaudet University in Washington, DC marched to the steps of the Capitol protesting the selection of Elisabeth A. Zinser, a hearing person, as the University's 7th president. Student leaders directed the crowd…

In June 1970, the Black Panther Party held a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial promoting the proposed "Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention," to be held that September in Philadelphia. The goal of the Convention was to rewrite…

In March 1990, disability rights activists gathered at the west front of the Capitol to pressure the House of Representatives to pass a disability rights bill. The bill passed in the Senate the year before, but it stalled in the House. Nearly 1,000…

On October 30, 2010, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert led a rally on the National Mall. The event was a combination of Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” and Colbert’s “March to Keep Fear Alive”. The event drew 215,000 people and was thought to be a…

In March 2010, as Congress was finalizing the Affordable Care Act, immigrants and activists took to the National Mall to call for immigration reform. Participants urged President Obama to keep his campaign promise of comprehensive immigration reform…

The Art of Revolution, a group who uses symbolic events to spark political action and social change, staged the "One Million Bones" exhibit on the National Mall June 8-10, 2013. This event laid out one million handcrafted "bones" on the central green…

This march on the National Mall for African American civil rights was proposed by Louis Farrakhan and organized with the support of the National African American Leadership Summit, the Nation of Islam, and various civil rights organizations. The…

The National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, held on October 14, 1979, was inspired in part by the assassination of openly gay California politician Harvey Milk. The five issues the march supported included the end of anti-homosexual…

On October 6, 1943, a group of 400 rabbis walked from Union Station to the US Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, and White House in an effort to raise awareness that millions of European Jews were being killed or imprisoned by the Nazi regime. Led by Hillel…