I had lived in the Washington DC metro area from 1976 thru 1978, but I left to come back to New Jersey as to go to law school (and wound up staying). One of the last things that I did before leaving in late 1978 was to visit the Lincoln Memorial. When you actually live in or around Washington, you don’t make a big effort to visit all the usual tourist attractions; you figure there is plenty of time to get to them. I would drop in on one of the Smithsonians now and then, and I recall having a nice afternoon at the National Archives. But I hardly went out of my way to see the great monuments up close. They’d be there anytime, right?

As I was getting ready to leave, I decided that I should pay a visit to Honest Abe. I picked a late-morning weekday in the fall, when there would hardly be any tourists around. I wanted to have my “moment” with Mr. Lincoln. I wanted to feel the power of his presence, to stand in awe of his great achievement in saving the nation and setting African Americans on the path to freedom, and then losing his own life to a fanatic. I figured that would take at least 20 minutes if not the better part of an hour at his Memorial down at the far end of the reflecting pool on the Mall. So I climbed the steps that day and walked past the columns, stepping into the temple chamber. I approached the super-sized “portrait in stone” of the 16th President of the United States, the awe circuits in my brain tingling and ready to go. It was about to be me and Old Abe, contemplating the ages together.

Well, not quite. Turns out that I wasn’t alone, and that my companion at the site wasn’t there for awe-struck contemplation. An elderly African-American fellow  »  continue reading …