Field Trip: Civil Rights On The Mall

A public park can teach a nation. We head to the National Mall with Jeremy Goldstein from the Trust for the National Mall to trace a civil rights tour that links the MLK Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial into one living civics lesson. From the first glimpse of Dr. King carved out of stone to the bronze plaque marking where “I Have a Dream” rang out, we unpack how place turns moments into movements.

Jeremy pulls back the curtain on how memorials happen: citizen fundraising, an act of Congress, and a commission that steers design and purpose. We talk about Alpha Phi Alpha’s early role in rallying support for the MLK Memorial, and why the Mall’s open design—with permits, rules, and respect for the grounds—protects both speech and safety. The story stretches backward to Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert on the Lincoln steps, showing how culture, protest, and the promise of equality share the same stage.

This tour also restores complexity to the March on Washington by centering its economic demands—jobs, wages, and opportunity—alongside moral urgency. With the National Mall Gateway’s curated routes and time mapping, plus the March On podcast that spotlights Bayard Rustin’s strategic genius, you can walk the timeline or experience it from home. The Mall stands as America’s front yard: open, accessible, and lined with reminders that a more perfect union is a practice, not a finish line.

If this journey moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves history, and leave a quick review to help more listeners find the tour. What stop on the Mall changed how you see America?

Take the tour here! 

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Transcript

Why The Mall Matters For Movements

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome back, everyone. It is Field Trip Friday with our friend Jeremy Goldstein from the Trust for the National Mall. If you have not listened to the first two field trip Fridays, please do. They were so fun. And I am so excited because I just booked a couple trips to DC for business purposes and I'm just so excited to go to the mall again. So, Jeremy, welcome back. Thank you so much again for being here. And today's field trip, we're taking the civil rights tour, which is so fun. I, you know, we talked about the Lincoln Memorial in a previous episode, but I will never forget going to the MLK memorial for the first time and kind of turning that corner and seeing Dr. King carved out of stone. And it absolutely took my breath away and it was so incredible. So I am stoked to talk about this. So we talked a little bit about this before, but why has the mall been central to major civil rights movements like Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech?

Touring Via The National Mall Gateway

Civil Rights On America’s Front Yard

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, again, thank you for having me on. I'm so excited. I'm always excited to talk about the mall. So this civil rights tour that we put together, we have a set of curated tours on the National Mall Gateway, which was recently launched last year. It's gateway.nationalmall.org, a little plug there. I mean, if you go into the tours section, you can find a whole set of tours that are walking tours to tell you a little bit about the feature, too, as well. There's you can do a virtual tour from your own home or your classroom, but also there are tour details if you are indeed on the National Mall that include something called time mapping that we worked with. So we noted that people needed to know how much time it took to get to these places by walking. We did some estimations. We used a little bit of emerging technology like aka AI and figured out that our tour is about, you know, 1.7 hours. That's the tour duration, in order to cover three sites, which include the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as well, because there's um these spaces are included in a lot of things that were of the era. But let's talk a little bit about like that significance that we're talking about for the civil rights in the mall. In the last episode, I talked a little bit about the um concept of America's front yard, and I love to cite this term 9,000 permanent events on the National Mall. And that includes advocacy, protests, um, demonstrations, things like that, events like pickleball on the mall, the National Trust for the National Mall does pickleball on the mall. But all of these things are easily accessed by just submitting a very inexpensive permit to have that on there. Now, you do have to follow the regulations and rules of the space. There's reverence to preserve that space as well. So that being the root of America's front yard, the civil rights movements were part of that First Amendment front yard space. And this is where you go. It's America's largest stage, not just for media coverage, but it is a very large space that holds a lot of people. And what that does is that shows the interest and intentions of individuals in a movement. And that's why I think you know we we can link not only the you know the the um the civil rights movement, but in addition, any other large move in the United States that's really wanting to make a statement and using that free speech.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

So how do the MLK Memorial and the March on Washington kind of connect across time?

From Marian Anderson To I Have A Dream

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Yeah, this is this is interesting because the MLK memorial is we'll say recent, 1980s. In 83, it was dedicated. The MLK Memorial is a very interesting memorial, too, is that uh Martin Luther King Jr. was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity when he was at Boston University. And later on, that legacy of that membership to the uh fraternity actually brought about the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Money was raised to build the memorial in the 70s and 80s to commemorate it by members of Alpha Phi Alpha. They led that. And then later on, and and when you want to do a memorial or any kind of monument, an act of Congress is required, a commission is required, and then fundraising is required. And I mentioned before, no single monument or memorial was just purely funded by federal money. It is also sort of people put their their voice in there in saying that they they want to support this, so they fundraised for it. So that being said, the march on Washington as a significant event in the 1960s with Martin Luther King's march and the commemoration of the plaque on the Lincoln as well, where he stood and had the I have a dream speech. These are iconic moments. But also, if you look at that space before Martin Luther King in the 1930s, where Marian Anderson performed there as she was barred from performing in other spaces in Washington, D.C. So there is a through line between those two events. But in addition to that, there's that line that connects that free speech space. And where better to kind of get on stage and get in front of many people, thousands of people, to talk about civil rights and to deliver the eye of a dream speech. That's the national mall. That's the place to do it.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

And what civic lessons can students and the general public really learn from kind of these public protests, these marches on the mall?

Economic Justice In The March On Washington

The March On Podcast And Rustin

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah. You know, the the concept for a permit and the idea if you're going to set up a demonstration, um, a public demonstration, it's been long linked to that right that Americans have for free speech, but there's also a responsibility there. We assume and expect peaceful protest. And that really was the civil rights, you know, movement's foundation is that this protest is going to be peaceful. And, you know, while that goes awry sometimes, because we are an imperfect um republic sometimes, we have, you know, we have these, we have this quest towards a more perfect union. Sometimes we derail that, and I'm teasing out something in our next episode. But what I really think we we can students can learn is that you have a voice and it's guaranteed by the Constitution, and peaceful protest is expected. And if you want to petition Capitol Hill or anyone in Congress, you're welcome to do that. If you want to hold a large demonstration, you can get the permits and you can get the people. You know, a demonstration of one person is still a viable option as well. But I think those civic lessons of the Constitution in action is really an important thing to consider. One other thing that I like to kind of add in there is that the uh you know, the the march on Washington was for civil rights, but it was also for jobs, and it was also about economic equity. So there were a number of messages in Dr. King's message, and that that's get continued on with a lot of the same civil rights um action that you see these days. So there was a lot of messaging in that, and it was a uh a large movement. I'll add another resource here for anyone who's interested. Um, on uh on the trust webpage, we have a connection to the March On podcast. And that was a partnership we had with Netflix that created the Rustin movie, which was a story of Bayard Rustin and the development of the civil rights movement and the March on Washington. The March On podcast follows that that experience, and you can walk the mall, or you can follow it through the gateway and listen to the podcast which describes these sort of stops and places for the civil rights movement on the National Mall.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

That is I'm like so excited to do this because I think there are probably listeners right now who have never heard of Bayard Rustin, and he, you know, was the architect of this merch on Washington. So we talk about a more perfect union. I really think that that is one of my favorite parts of you know the constitution. How does the mall embody the idea of a more perfect union?

Closing And Next Field Trip Tease

SPEAKER_00 9:03

I I think there's hope in that statement. I'm I'm gonna get a little bit sentimental there as an American and and you know as a civics person and a teacher, a longtime teacher. I think if we're striving for a more perfect that assumes that there's more work to be done, historically, we're talking about this case as something that's in the preamble. It also is a subtle sort of transition from the Articles of Confederation to a stronger central union of people and government in our country. And I think the mall embodies the idea as a gathering place and be a center of civic ideas, not just the First Amendment, but all of the monuments and memorials around there represent episodes in U.S. history, episodes in the civil rights movement, and many different concepts and ideas as we strive to be a more perfect union. And again, I mentioned in the last episode there are no gates, there are no admissions fees, welcome to the mall. It's always open. If you want to jog there, if you want to tour there, if you're coming from another country to learn about America, it's open. And really that idea is that we want people to come into union and convening in this large uh front yard, so to speak.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

I love that. And I actually will be in DC next month. And I think, you know, you talk about this podcast and the civil rights tour. I think that that's what I'm going to do this time because how fun and how special that this place exists and there's so much history there. Jeremy, thank you so much. I am so excited to go on our next field trip.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, definitely. I'm looking forward to it. I love talking about them all, obviously. Um, and thanks for the opportunity. Looking forward to more.