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…

While not an exact image of the Mall, this abolitionist print shows the role of the federal city in the interstate slave trade in the early 1800s. Slaves worked, lived, were held captive, and sold within sight of the Capitol building. In this print,…

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…

In October 1945, World War II Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was honored with a parade in Washington, DC, before being presented with a Gold Star by President Truman for his service as the Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean…

World War I US Army veteran Eric Carlson joined the 1932 Bonus March to seek early payment of pension money promised veterans by the government. He was shot during a confrontation between marchers and DC police, who were trying to evict the marchers…

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 Organization of American States (OAS) Building was completed in 1910. Its style is meant to be a fusion of some of the major architectural elements from its participating members, with Spanish, Native American, French, Portuguese, and English…