Washington DC Monument tour

The AR Memory DC app takes you on a self-guided Washington DC monument tour. With the app, you can explore the hidden histories of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The information in the app is based on research in public history.

In this blog post, we're going to walk through a few overlooked aspects of popular Washington DC monuments. Use this as a guide as you explore Washington DC or read through to learn about monuments at the National Mall. For more info and a more immersive experience, check out the app.

Lincoln Memorial

Unknown. 1993. 1993 March on Washington. Photograph. Walter P. Reuther Library. July 25, 2021. https://reuther.wayne.edu/node/14959

During your Washington DC monument tour, stop at the Lincoln Memorial, where over a million people gathered on April 25, 1993, for the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. This peaceful demonstration called for the passing of a civil rights bill, which included employment protections, the right to marry, and more funding in support of anti-AIDS measures. The march also called for an end to the ban on homosexuals in the US military and the abolishment of sodomy laws.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Unidentified Southern Vietnamese women and children just before they were shot by American GI’s during the My Lai Massacre. Ronald L. Haeberle. Report of the Department of Army review of the preliminary investigations into the My Lai incident. Volume III, Exhibits, Book 6 - Photographs, page 50, 14 March 1970.

The US Military found it difficult to distinguish enemy combatants from civilian Vietnamese due to the nature of guerrilla warfare. Thus, military commanders often conducted search-and-destroy operations against Vietnamese settlements that housed both civilians and guerrilla fighters.

The extent and atrocious nature of Vietnamese civilian suffering was underreported and largely ignored in the American media until whistleblowers (often American soldiers) publicly revealed the atrocities they had witness or committed against Vietnamese civilians.

The lowest estimate of civilian casualties are 250,000 civilians killed by American military operations (not counting those killed by enemy forces), including 65,000 civilians killed by American aerial bombing. These numbers come from official US Department of Defense records. In addition, the US military assumes that 660,000 revolutionary soldiers killed were actually civilians. This estimate is lower than a later study that concluded that 1.2 million civilians died at the hands of Americans. The Vietnamese government estimates that 2 million civilians were killed from 1954 to 1975.

The Capitol Building

West front of the United States Capitol. William Thornton et al., “United States Capitol,” Histories of the National Mall, accessed June 30, 2021. http://mallhistory.org/items/show/59

Enslaved people contributed significantly to the construction of the Capitol Building. When construction commenced in 1793, enslaved laborers undertook the bulk of the work. Enslaved labor was abundant as renting enslaved people to the federal government was very profitable for slaveholders. Enslaved workers were involved in various elements of the Capitol's construction, from bricklaying and iron working to saw cutting. They also made a substantial contribution to the carpentry of the building, including the framing of the roof and the installation of its covering.

From 1795 to 1801, there were 385 individual payments made to compensate for "Negro hire" at the construction of the Capitol. While the laborers themselves typically earned pennies for a day's work, their owners received five dollars a week from the work of their enslaved men.

In 2012, Congress unveiled a small marker in the Emancipation Hall of the Capitol Building to remember the contributions made by enslaved African Americans in its construction. However, this fact remains unacknowledged in the public space around the building and thus remains invisible to the vast majority of visitors to the National Mall.

The Washington Monument

Etching of the original silver medal presented by George Washington to Red Jacket. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/00651295/?loclr=blogtea

George Washington first encountered Native Americans on his westward trips as a land surveyor. In the company of Native Americans from different tribes, Washington engaged in diplomatic efforts to establish peace and reach mutual goals. Among the tribes he encountered were the Mohawks, Senecas, Oneidas, and Cherokees.

While Washington built alliances with Native Americans to fight wars against Europeans in the American Revolutionary War, he also fought wars to secure Native American land and dispossessed Indian peoples on a large scale.

Washington’s relationship with Native Americans was hampered by his relentless pursuit of Ohio lands and his inability to forge lasting alliances with Indian nations during the Revolutionary War. Barbara Alice Mann notes that the Washingtons were among the Virginia oligarchic elite that staked out their “presumptuous, and rather preposterous, claim to the Ohio lands, which had long belonged to the Iroquois, Cherokees, Lenapes, Shawnees, Miamis, Ottawas, and Potawatomis.”

In his pursuit of indigenous lands, Washington ordered the destruction of Native American food supplies and housing stocks. Indeed, Washington’s lifelong interest in acquiring Native American land was a major factor guiding his military tactics during the Revolutionary War. Indeed, as Colin Calloway notes, Washington’s “entire Indian policy and his vision for the nation depended on the acquisition of Indian territory.

Washington DC Monument Tour References

Allen, William C. The United States Capitol: A Brief Architectural History. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Office, 2001.

Barclay, Scott, Mary Bernstein, and Anna-Maria Marshall ed. Queer Mobilizations: LGBT Activists Confront the Law. New York: NYU Press, 2009.

Calloway, Colin. The Indian World of George Washington. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Finkelman, Paul and Donald R. Kennon. In The Shadow of Freedom: The Politics of Slavery in the National Capital. Athens: Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by Ohio University Press, 2010.

Ghaziani, Amin. The Dividends of Dissent: How Conflict and Culture Work in Lesbian and Gay Marches on Washington. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Hirschman, Charles, Samuel Preston, and Vu Manh Loi. “Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate.” Population and Development Review 21, no. 4 (1995): 783. https://doi.org/10.2307/2137774.

Lengel, Edward G., and John K Rowland. “Treating American Indians as 'Slaves', 'Dogs', and Unwanted Allies: George Washington, Edward Braddock, and the Influence of

Ethnocentrism and Diplomatic Pragmatism in Ohio Valley Military Relations, 1753-1755.” Essay. In A Companion to George Washington, 31–51. Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Mann, Barbara Alice. George Washington's War on Native America. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Tirman, John. “The Vietnam War: The High Cost of Credibility.” Essay. In: The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America's Wars, 123–81. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Turse, Nick. Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: A Metropolitan Book, 2014.