History Galleries - From Slavery to Today, Bottom to Top
A stop on Washington DC National Mall Walking Tour, a free self-guided tour.
The History Galleries are built to be walked upward. You ride an elevator down to the lowest concourse and climb ramps through three levels: Slavery and Freedom, 1400 to 1877; the Era of Segregation, 1876 to 1968; and A Changing America, 1968 and Beyond.
At the bottom are iron ballast blocks from the Sao Jose, a Portuguese slave ship that sank off South Africa in 1794 with more than 500 captive Mozambicans aboard. Nearby, a statue of Thomas Jefferson stands before a wall of bricks bearing the names of people he enslaved at Monticello. Higher up you reach two stools from the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the 1960 sit-ins began.
The ramps get wider and brighter as you rise, a deliberate effect. Allow at least two hours here alone. Partway up, in the segregation era, a separate room holds the Emmett Till memorial.
More on Wikipedia: Thomas Jefferson · Greensboro sit-ins
Stops on this tour
- Washington Monument
- National Museum of African American History and Cu
- National Museum of American History
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
- National Gallery of Art
- United States Capitol
- United States Botanic Garden
- National Museum of the American Indian
- National Air and Space Museum
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- The Smithsonian Institution Building - The Castle
- Freer Gallery of Art
- Jefferson Memorial
- World War II Memorial
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Korean War Memorial
- Lincoln Memorial
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- White House Ellipse
- White House
- Lafayette Square