"Sweet Freedom's Song:" Great Photos, History, and Descriptions of the Inaugural Day (Part 2 of 3)
Posted: Tuesday, March 03, 2009
by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo
"Sweet Freedom's Song"
Revolutionary Drill Unit from the Inaugural Parade
(Educational fair use)
Before the inauguration at noon,the number of people joining the assembly built and their mood sprang from the shared sights and sounds.The crowdreveled in the sea of faces.The great multitude's unspoken trust and common valuesinspired a bounding inner joy. Peace and calm marked the joviality of the day.The dayanswered Bob Marley's insistent cry,"let's get together and feel alright."So, while Barack Obama's inauguration was celebrated with a long parade featuring high school marching bands, mounted teams, veteran groups, luna modules, acrobats, and military units; the people, without planning, made a parade of their own.
Parades are a special form of street theater. As one web writer relates, a parade is a social narrative, its symbols and tableaux approach and pass by, telling the onlookers a story about society.
Two million--individuals, families, friends, church members, neighbors, international visitors, young and old, faces that reflected many nations, layered and capped against the bright chill, wearing vibram-soled trekking shoes--streamed along the sidewalks leading to the mall.T his stream, steadily renewed by citizens emerging from metrostops and charter buses who joined in this mass movement of people from everywhere,from Maine to California, from Canada to the Caribbean, from England to New Zealand; grandmothers and grandfathers, teachers, retirees, administrators, mothers, fathers; groups wearing red, white, and blue boa scarves, dress slacks and work jeans, women in full furs of mink and ermine, elders in knit hatsresembling World War II aviator caps,found in its journey itsown source. This phalanx of people was the majestic walk of the working class who, assembled with their neighbors and children, came in unending numbers--walking toward the end of an undeclared ideas of conflict,toward the end ofideological power grabs--announcing by the passage of their feet that we are one nation, united, a common mosaic of differences, with one hope.
How did those gathered to witness the installation of a new president become a part of the event? They g athered in the details. Opinions, predications, projections, and deconstructions tossed about from every point of view. But the details, the small minute portions, offered a confidential truth.It was quite separate from the grand discourse paraded as insight by the national news teams.The broadcastgroups, with lessthan fifty talking heads and guests, are skilled not in observation, but in spin. Theydelivered agendas of affirmation or rebuke.
The details of those in the crowd in the crowd never confirmed nor denied a grand scheme. Their grandness was in simply being an open window of who we are.
From my notes:
Entering the wooded area to the right of the gates, I follow one of the winding paths to a bench near the statures of the three soldiers that express the close camaraderie and vigilant duty of those sent to fight in Viet Nam. Sleeves rolled up, forearms flexed, holding M-16's, their eyes watching the forward future of war's perilous steps, their lean bronze muscles offer the quiet strength of the fighting man.
The Viet Nam Memorial Stature, Washington, DC
(used under fair use, education)
Further along, the path leads through the trees to a slight depression where there is a shiny stone wall set in the earth that trails along the shallow hollow. This stone wallisinscribed with the names of the 58,195 members of the Armed Forces killed during the fighting in Viet Nam.The wallstarts small, swells and rises, only to narrow again. I see a Hispanic youth group, with the lively cadence of the youth, all wearing red, white, and blue boas passing along the wall, looking at the names inscribed and at their own reflections. The names and images touch each other in a vision of past and present as the group moves along.
I remember Viet Nam. I had neighbors who were killed or wounded in its conflict. I well up and break down, overcome by emotion, the hallowed sacrifice still a valued part of memory, now released and recalled on this remarkable day of glory . . .
The names of the lost are alive, their spirits near. The sweet song of freedom issung bythose silent names. No nation honors its history and national space as does the United States.
The Viet Nam Memorial, Washington, DC
(reprinted under fair use for educational purposes)
I rise and begin to cross in front of Lincoln's memorial. People are sitting on its steps. They arestretched across the the entire length of the stature's columned arcade. Dressed in colorful outfits of red, green, blue, yellow, navy, orange, brown and tan, in parkas and knit caps, they are stacked on the rows of steps against the memorial's gleaming white, stoic marble. Row after row after row, they have chosen to sit at Lincoln's feet. I see this sight, and begin crying again.
Crowds gathering on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Inauguration Day
(reprinted under educational fair use)
(izik / flickr; reprinted under Creative Commons license)
The earliest references to parades are found in records of religious processions in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and the Orient before 3000 BCE. Military powers, from the Romans to the old Soviet Union, impressed their subjugated communities by paradingtheir militarystrength. In medieval Europe, paradeswere an opportunityfor people to socialize and be entertained; parades were public events with decorated carts and wagons, and exotic performers. In the Caribbean, the gaudy, elaborate, colorful carnival parades have religious significance--and a hedonistic, ribald core.
First Inauguration at the Capitol, the East Portico,1829 (fair use)
Andrew Jackson takes the Oath of Office from John Marshall
In America, from the precision drills of colonial militia to Philadelphia's famousMummers parade to New York's legendaryMacy's Thanksgiving Day parade (the first to be televised, and once broadcast on radio) to New Orleans Mardi Gras to 'California's Rose Bowl parade, parades have always been a spectacleof the flamboyant and the sublime. Many American parades been associated with change and hard times. After hurricane, Katrina, the Mardi Gras parade took on a special meaning. It demonstrated the symbolic will to rebuild a devastated New Orleans.
Tuesday's informal parade was impressive in its absence of partisan paraphernalia. No big banners or signs. Many small signs were hand made. There were flags from lots of countries, but mainly from Americathousands waved flags during the broadcast that were unseen along the streets.
Again, from the notes:
A small Asian child, perhaps four or five, looked up at his parents in the GWU food court and informed them, with the forceful insistence of children whose voice is regarded in the family, I want to see Obama. To him, his parents were holding up the show and taking too long to get coffee and food. At the mall, a small child around the small age sat on his father's lap next to me and hummed Stars and Stripes. Then he chanted, O-baam-a! Obaam-a!
Later, to hear the roaring cheers of the crowd at the swearing-in express the determination of America in one great voice, to watch the flagswaving furiously on the Jumbotron was a surreal experience, one in which existed both inside and outside of the moment. The electricity of this day was in the hearts of joy and arms open to each other, the best wishes offered for our nation without recriminations, blame, put-downs, look-downs, labels, or the whinny disgust that still appears in newspapers and on the internet. This was a day of flag waving and cheers.
Thatensemble Michelle Obama wore as she strolled out unto the capitol terrace created more excitement than a dance of circus' lions. A bold step that spoke of the inaugural's importance, Michelle Obama's lemon grass long coat over a sheath embroidered with lace broke new ground and defied conventional tastes. It met with excited cheers from the crowd.
A comment from the Huffington Post noted:
The colors of Michelle's outfit and accessories, yellow and green, are next to each other on the color spectrum, as are the colors of the girls' outfits. Remember ROY G BIV? If you add the colors of Malia's and Sasha's outfits to Michelle's, you have virtually the entire color spectrum: Sasha (RO) + Michelle (Y G) + Malia (BIV) = a rainbow. What an apt statement and metaphor for what lies ahead.
The next day, shares of J. Crew went up 10 percent.
The United States Army Band performs in the Inaugural Parade
President and Mrs. Obama, walking in
the inaugural parade, along Pennsylvania Avenue
(Brian Jackson (2) / flickr; reprinted under Creative Commons license)
(fair use)
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Wow I loved the pictures...
Great way to remember the day!
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