2/2/2011:
North Dakota Senator Milton Young appeared in the pages of Time magazine on this date in 1968. The magazine detailed the Senator’s efforts, and eventual triumph, to restore the infamous Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.
Prior to the night of April 14th, 1865, Ford’s Theater had been a very successful theater, catering to the city’s financial and political elite. That Good Friday in 1865, the theater was showing Our American Cousin to a full house, including President Abraham Lincoln. However, the President’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth seemed to seal the theater’s fate; the building was immediately closed by military police, and remained closed as evidence until Booth’s co-conspirators had all met justice by hanging on July 7th, 1865.
John Ford, the theater’s owner, hoped to re-open the theater, but his attempts were vilified by the media and wider public. Amid a barrage of anonymous threats, Ford was forced to sell the theater to the War Department for $80,000. He used the money to open a new theater in Baltimore in 1871. Probably in an effort of effacement, the government transformed the theater into a medical museum and offices. Although most people were aware of the building’s history, no monument or landmark was erected to memorialize the location of Lincoln’s assassination.
That changed in the 1930s, when Congress was persuaded to transform the building into a Lincoln Museum, housing various civil-war artifacts. Still, no attempt was made to link the location to its role as the backdrop of that tragic night in 1865. In the 1940s, Senator Milton Young of North Dakota began a campaign to restore the building to its original glory as a functioning theater. It took nineteen years, but the Senator eventually succeeded in securing $2.7 million to complete the work. The Theatre opened on the anniversary of Lincoln’s birthday, February 12th, 1968. Today, it stands not only as an important monument in American history, but also as the permanent home of the National Repertory Theater, putting on hundreds of shows each year.
In 1981, Young became the first recipient of the prestigious Ford Theater Lincoln Medal. Joined by such notable figures as Maya Angelou, Hillary Clinton, and Sidney Poitier, the medal recognizes individuals possessing the mettle of character embodied by Lincoln himself. Young served as a North Dakota Senator until 1981, becoming one of the longest-serving Senators of all time.
Dakota Datebook written by Jayme L. Job
Sources:
Reffell, Eva. 2004 Ford’s Theatre’s Reconstruction: Warehouse, Museum, Pilgrimage Site (1865-1968), SI 637, Archives and Institutions of Social Memory.
Time. “People’ Friday, February 2, 1968. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,837804-2,00.html)
http://www.fordstheatre.org/home/explore-lincoln/honoring-lincoln/ford-s-theatre-lincoln-medal.
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=y000047