In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with a dream – and in the years since, millions have come here to make their own voices heard.
According to Mike Litterst, chief of communications for the National Mall, "The Lincoln Memorial, more than any other of the monuments and memorials we oversee, has become a historic site in its own right, a symbol of where you go to exercise your First Amendment right."
But Litterst said creating a stage for protest wasn't part of the Memorial's original design: "It is on a straight line axis from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, to where the Lincoln Memorial was built. Henry Bacon, the architect, envisioned that at the far end of the of the Mall, you have the Capitol Building, which represents the government, and here you have the Lincoln Memorial, Abraham Lincoln, the savior of that government."
