Existing comment:
The 1909 Centennial of Lincoln's Birth:
The Lincoln Centennial generated a host of activities. In New York City, an estimated one million people took part in observances. At Hodgenville, Kentucky, Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for a memorial housing Lincoln's boyhood cabin. Nation-wide the penny became the first American coin to bear a president's likeness.
Casting a cloud over the Centennial festivities was the nation's festering race problem, made worse by segregation and Jim Crow law throughout the country. In August 1908, a savage race riot engulfed Springfield, Illinois. Six months later, Springfield's official Lincoln centennial banquet was a whites-only affair. A local black pastor, LH Magee, looked ahead to the 2009 Lincoln Bicentennial, but which he hoped that "prejudice shall have been banished as a myth and relegated to the dark days of 'Salem witchcraft'." |