File:The Lincoln Memorial (black & white photo).jpg

English: Lincoln Memorial, stately monument in Washington, D.C., honouring Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, and “the virtues of tolerance, honesty, and constancy in the human spirit.” Designed by Henry Bacon on a plan similar to that of the Parthenon in Athens, the structure was constructed on reclaimed marshland along the banks of the Potomac River. The site selection caused controversy; the speaker of the House of Representatives, Joseph Cannon, favoured a more prominent spot across the Potomac, maintaining: “I’ll never let a memorial to Abraham Lincoln be erected in that g– damned swamp.” The cornerstone was set in 1915, and the completed memorial was dedicated before more than 50,000 people on May 30, 1922. Lincoln’s only surviving son, Robert Todd Lincoln, attended the ceremony. President Warren G. Harding and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft, a former president, delivered addresses. Ironically, despite Lincoln’s renown as the “Great Emancipator,” the dedication ceremonies were strictly segregated; even Robert Moton, president of Tuskegee Institute, who spoke in the ceremony, was not allowed to sit on the speaker’s platform and instead was required to sit in an area reserved for African Americans.