Tal Lavin - Notable Sandwiches #1: American Hero

[Nevilledog]

https://buttondown.com/theswordandthesandwich/archive/notable-sandwiches-1-american-hero/

A little over a hundred years ago, at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, the neighboring Reflecting Pool wasn’t yet complete. It was more than a pit, less than a reflection. Tens of thousands of people gathered for the ceremony on May 30, 1922, Memorial Day, but the pool itself would not be ready until December of that year; headlines at the time declared bemusedly, “Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Begins to Reflect.”

At the dedication, a trio of speakers addressed the masses: Harding, former president and then-chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Howard Taft, and Robert Russa Moton, president of the Tuskegee Institute, and a lifelong, if incrementalist, advocate for civil rights. Moton’s speech was first and foremost an encomium to Lincoln, but he also—speaking before a segregated audience of 50,000 on the National Mall—put forth a theory of America divided by Manichaean conflict between two opposing forces.

“While the Mayflower was riding at anchor preparing for her voyage from Plymouth, another ship had already arrived at Jamestown. The first was to bear the pioneers of freedom, freedom of thought and freedom of conscience; the latter had already borne the pioneers of bondage. Here, then, upon American soil within a year met the two great forces that were to shape the destiny of the Nation. They developed side by side. Freedom was the great compelling force that dominated all, and like a great and shining light beckoned the oppressed of every land to the hospitality of these shores. But slavery like a brittle thread was woven year by year into the fabric of the Nation’s life,” Moton said. “In the process of time, as was inevitable, these great forces of liberty and the forces of bondage from the ships at Plymouth and Jamestown met in open conflict upon the field of battle.”

There, in front of a vast, shallow pit, Moton’s thesis made a great deal of sense. A Black man was speaking beside the president, but to a segregated audience; he was speaking in memory of the man who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and then was murdered by a white supremacist zealot. Over the ensuing century, the pool would become an iconic landmark. Civil rights icons from Marian Anderson to Martin Luther King, Jr. would speak and sing before it; one hundred thousand anti-Vietnam War protesters met before the pool in 1967; in 1985, the AIDS memorial quilt, in all its many heartbreaking colors, was laid out before water, on the green grass of the National Mall. This imperfect, tranquil thing, rebuilt and shored up again and again, seemed to embody the dual forces of bondage and the struggle against it that propel America through the decades.

*snip*

[lame54]

1. .

[Solly Mack]

2. Very good

[Nevilledog]

3. I should change the title to attract eyes to this, but I usually stick with the author's choice.

[Solly Mack]

4. If you do, someone will complain the heading doesn't match the article.

Folks are missing out.

[Nevilledog]

5. I'm also lazy, so that's a factor.

[Solly Mack]

6. Stops me, too.

[blogslug]

7. Looking forward to buying his book!

Glad you asked!!! Look for The Book of Notable Sandwiches: A Lunchtime History of the World next summer!!!

— Tal Lavin (@swordsjew.bsky.social) 2026-07-08T01:36:23.181Z

[Nevilledog]

8. He's great.