Three January Birthdays on the National Mall: Alice Paul, Martin Luther King Jr. and FDR

Three people born in January are closely connected with monuments and memorials in the National Mall and Memorial Parks: suffragist Alice Paul, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Alice Paul, born January 11, 1885

Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument lit in purple and gold for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, August 26, 2020. National Park Service photo.

Alice Paul was an outspoken suffragist — someone who works for the right to vote — and feminist, someone who works for equality between the sexes. She grew up in New Jersey in a family belonging to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, who believe in equality for men and women, including at the ballot box. Her mother, Tacie, took her to woman suffrage meetings as a girl. After a Quaker high school she went to Swarthmore College, founded by a Quaker committee that included her grandfather and the suffragist Lucretia Mott, and which educated men and women equally. Paul later said that, raised among people who believed the sexes were equal, she had never thought otherwise.

She joined the American fight for the vote after taking part in suffragette protests in England, and concluded that the surest way to guarantee every woman the vote was to amend the U.S. Constitution. By 1912 women could vote in some western states and in some local elections, but progress was slow. Paul became known for demonstrations that drew heavy publicity, such as the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession down Pennsylvania Avenue and the Silent Sentinel pickets of the White House in 1917. Many supporters of suffrage disagreed with her tactics.

In 1916 she founded the National Woman's Party to campaign for women's equality. The party kept working after the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, lobbying from its headquarters on Capitol Hill to change laws and pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Martin Luther King Jr., born January 15, 1929

Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. Image from the National Park Service's page.

King's ties to the Lincoln Memorial began long before the March on Washington. On Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian Anderson sing at their Constitution Hall, she gave a concert at the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of about 75,000 stretching along the Reflecting Pool. It was also broadcast on radio, and 10-year-old Martin may have heard it at home in Atlanta.

In 1944, as a junior at Booker T. Washington High School, King wrote an essay, "The Negro and the Constitution," about the concert. He hailed it as a rebirth of liberty, equality and fraternity, but pointed out that the celebration changed nothing for Black Americans: Anderson still could not stay overnight in a good hotel anywhere in the country. The essay won a local contest, and King traveled with his teacher to a statewide one. On the way, the two were made to give up their bus seats to white passengers — an experience he remembered when he later became an activist against segregation. The essay is published online by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, born January 30, 1882

The statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his wheelchair in the forecourt of the FDR Memorial. National Park Service photo.

Roosevelt used leg braces and a cane to stand and wheelchairs, many of his own design, to get around, but he kept his disability from the public — perhaps fearing that people of his time would equate being unable to walk with weak leadership, or perhaps because he had already met discrimination. When the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial was dedicated in 1997, its designer, Lawrence Halprin, and his team chose to present him as he had presented himself. Neil Estern's large statue in the memorial's third room shows him seated, a cloak over his legs.

Many people objected that the memorial hid his paralysis. The National Organization for Disability argued it should show him in his wheelchair, most of his grandchildren agreed, and changes were authorized. On January 10, 2001, the Prologue Room opened with a life-size statue of Roosevelt in a wheelchair he designed himself — a kitchen chair fitted with tricycle wheels. On the wall behind it is a passage from Eleanor Roosevelt saying that his illness gave him new strength and courage and taught him infinite patience and persistence.

Even before that addition, the designers meant the memorial to be open to people of every ability. Visitors can touch the statues, fountains in each room tell the story of his presidency through sound, and the third room's mural of New Deal programs includes braille on its bronze panels. The National Park Service has since added panels with tactile and audio descriptions.

Sources

• National Park Service, National Mall and Memorial Parks: "NAMA Notebook: January Birthdays," a post for teachers. Its classroom questions and activities are left out, and the words of Alice Paul, Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt are paraphrased.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.