A little after 10 p.m. on April 14, 1865, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, John Wilkes Booth crept into the box occupied by US President Abraham Lincoln, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, and two guests. Below, on stage, actors performed “Our American Cousin,” a three-act farce portraying a boorish American introduced to his aristocratic English relations. Masked by audience laughter, Booth leveled his pistol and fired a single, fatal shot into the back of the President’s head.
Lincoln lingered but died early the next morning. Booth was killed a few weeks later trying to evade capture. Four co-conspirators were ultimately hanged for a conspiracy that included not only the successful assassination of the President but also attempts on the lives of Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward.
Booth, a well-known actor, was a Confederate sympathizer. It is thought that his impulse to kill Lincoln arose from hearing the President say in a recent speech that he intended further steps on behalf of the rights of newly emancipated African Americans.
At the time of his death, Lincoln was immensely popular, having just won a second term against all odds, fortified by the looming successful end of a brutal and bloody civil war.
The assassination of Lincoln not only shocked a nation, and a world, but arguably set history on another track. We will never know if the reconstruction of the defeated Confederate states would have been successful with Lincoln at the helm. Or whether he would have been able to lay the foundations for equal rights so as to ensure that Jim Crow laws wouldn’t have appeared.
The contributions of Lincoln to furthering the cause of freedom were recognized at the time. In 1867, Congress authorized a commission to erect a monument. Although it took many more decades, finally bills were passed to authorize construction, and the Lincoln Memorial was completed and dedicated on May 30, 1922.
The Lincoln Memorial became a notable venue for those wishing to highlight the hard work that still needed to be done to ensure America’s promise of freedom and justice for all. In 1939, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow the African American contralto Marian Anderson to perform before an integrated audience at the organization's Constitution Hall, at the suggestion of Eleanor Roosevelt, (wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt) and others, she performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday to a live audience of 75,000 and a nationwide radio audience. In 1947, Harry Truman chose the Lincoln Memorial as venue to become the first US president to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). And of course, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
The assassination of Lincoln is an event we should continue to solemnly mark. It provides two lessons to us as we sit here in 2025. First, the heavy cost at which progress has come in this country. Second, the hope that can arise from despair, fueling the inspiration of others to take up the torch of justice for all.
Anniversaries like this remind us of the sacred charge we hold from those who came before.
We cannot let Trump win.
But more importantly, we cannot let John Wilkes Booth win.
