Pennsylvania Avenue

Inez Milholland

Lucy Burns

Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin

A temporary exhibition at Freedom Plaza now features twelve bronze statues of Revolutionary War soldiers arranged in a civic tableau commemorating the 250th anniversary of American independence.

The Woman Suffrage Procession along Pennsylvania Avenue on March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's presidential inauguration, used pageantry to raise awareness about women's exclusion from the nation's political process. The publicity following the event re-energized the woman suffrage movement in the United States.

To honor and celebrate the heroes and martyrs of the Revolution during the 250th year of American Independence, the Trump Administration has announced the installation of “Spirit of '76" at Freedom Plaza, a temporary statuary exhibition in Washington, DC.

On March 3, 1913, the eve of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was in a Washington, D.C. drill rehearsal hall with sixty-four other Illinois suffragists. She was there representing the Alpha Suffrage Club (ASC)-- which she had founded as the first black suffrage club in Chicago just two months before. Ida planned to march with the women in what promised to be a parade of unprecedented scale and significance.

President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s train pulled into Washington’s Union Station on March 3, 1913, the day before his inauguration. A relatively thin crowd greeted him and his family before a motorcade took them to a hotel. “Where are all the people?” Wilson asked as he peered out the car window. “On the Avenue, watching the suffrage parade.” Across town, Alice Paul was in the thick of that suffrage procession, an event she created, planned and executed.

On March 2, 1918, a news item appeared on the front page of the Alaskan newspaper The Seward Gateway. Under the headline, “Alice Paul Has Measles,” was a report that the “militant suffrage leader” was confined to her room but carrying on her campaign through the door’s keyhole. Paul was largely unknown five years earlier when she arrived in Washington to work for an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting voter discrimination based on sex.

Black Patriots played a vital, often overlooked, role in the success of the American Revolution. The Daughters of the American Revolution estimates that 5,000 to 8,000 served the American cause as soldiers, sailors, teamsters, cooks, stewards, nurses, and camp followers.

Caesar Glover was an African who was kidnapped into slavery as a child and taken to America, where he was sold. Still enslaved as an adult, he enlisted in the Continental Army. Glover served three years and obtained his freedom after the war.