Symbols of Freedom, Sites of Remembrance
Washington, DC, is a site that’s central to the Civil Rights Movement. The United States Supreme Court building here was the location of the groundbreaking decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and students and professors at local Howard University played a major role in bringing school desegregation to the nation’s attention. The National Mall was the site of one of the largest human rights protests in American history – the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – after which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have a Dream Speech” to a crowd of 250,000. The nation’s capital and its historic landmarks offer opportunities for reflection on the American Civil Rights Movement and the country’s progress moving forward.
