Solomon Northrup, a free African American from New York, arrived in Washington in 1841 in the company of two white men who had promised him a job as a fiddler. After a day touring the Capitol and White House Grounds, the men drugged him and handed…

Hundreds of tractors paraded into Washington in February 5, 1979 to protest existing agriculture policies. The American Agriculture Movement organized this protest in 1979 after the 1st Tractorcade in 1978 did not bring changes they demanded. After…

In this photo, residents of Resurrection City wash mud from their feet. In the late spring and early summer of 1968, 2800 demonstrators camped on the Mall on 15 acres of open space south of the Reflecting Pool, including the area which is now the…

This program cover for the 1913 March shows a woman dressed as a knight, carrying the banner of "Votes for Women" upon her white steed. The Capitol is shown in the background. On the day of the Suffrage Parade over 5,000 mostly female marchers…

In 1943 a group of more than 400 rabbis, many of whom were Jewish Orthodox, demonstrated on the National Mall to urge the US to help the Jewish people of Nazi occupied Europe. Held three days before Yom Kippur, the October 6 rally generated national…

This article from the magazine The Literary Digest, a popular weekly publication, tells the story of the August 1925 Ku Klux Klan march along Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall. Held August 8, 1925, an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 Klansmen…

This image of slaves chained together marching from the House of J.W. Neal & Co.in Washington, DC, was published in a broadside (or poster). The broadside was printed during an abolitionist campaign in 1835-36 designed to pressure Congress to end…

The District of Columbia Emancipation Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862. Introduced during the thirty-seventh Congress in 1861, the Act granted the immediate emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia,…

The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam began as nationwide anti-war protests which took place during October 1969. A month later, on November 15, roughly half a million people gathered in Washington for anti-war activities. Protesters spoke out in…

In November 1938 a group of white women led by Eleanor Patterson, owner of the Washington Times-Herald, protested the removal of cherry trees from the Tidal Basin to make way for the Jefferson Memorial. On November 18, the women chained themselves to…