Capitol Hill Schools To Celebrate Bike-to-School Day
Capitol Hill Schools To Celebrate Bike-to-School Day
Roll With Us to Lincoln Park and Celebrate How
Biking to School Can Make a Difference in Student Health and Safety
Washington, DC – On Wednesday, May 9, 2018, at 7:30 a.m., students from 13+ Capitol Hill schools will gather at Lincoln Park (11th & East Capitol Streets, SE) for activities, snacks, warm up exercises, student performances, and VIP speakers – including Mayor Bowser and Councilmember Allen.
Enjoy Lincoln-themed activities for kids, giveaways, light snacks, coffee and helmet safety checks. Cyclists, skaters, strollers, scooters and pedestrians are all welcome!
Bike trains depart between 8:00 and 8:25 AM ‐ we all get to school on time!
Guest speakers, performers, and sponsors will round out the Lincoln Park Bike-to-School event:
- Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen will kick off and MC the festivities
- Mayor Muriel Bowser will speak
- The J.O. Wilson Elementary School Cheerleaders will perform
- Local fitness celebrities Gabriella Boston and Kathy Pugh will warm up the crowd
- Other speakers include Interim Chancellor Amanda Alexander (DC Public Schools), Natalie Draisin (FIA Foundation), Nancy Pullen-Seufert (National Center for Safe Routes to School), Ranger Vince Vaise (National Park Service), and representatives from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Federal Highway Administration
- Community members will join from the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT), The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), DC Water, Story of Our Schools, and the DC State Board of Education
- Local businesses will join from The Daily Rider, LimeBike, City Bikes, Capital Bikeshare (BikeinBloom), Zeke’s Coffee,
- The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) will support safe traffic flow around the park
- The Capitol Hill Community Foundation and the FIA Foundation generously support the event
- The Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization partners with the National Center for Safe Routes to School to organizing the event. Volunteers from participating schools make this annual event possible (Brent ES, Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan, Eliot-Hine MS, J.O. Wilson ES, Maury ES, Payne ES, Miner ES, Payne ES, Peabody Early Childhood, School Within a School at Goding, Stuart Hobson MS, Tyler ES, Watkins ES, AppleTree PCS, BASISDC, and more, as well as participating private and charter schools).
Contact: Sandra Moscoso, sandramoscosomills@gmail.com
About Bike-to-School Day
Bike-to-School Day builds on the popular Walk to School Day, which is celebrated across the country – and the world – each October. Many communities and schools have been holding spring walk and bicycle to school events for years.
More information here:
http://www.walkbiketoschool.org/learn-more/about-us/
Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial
Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial is a bronze statue honoring educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune, by Robert Berks.
The monument is the first statue erected on public land in Washington, D.C. to honor an African American and a woman. The statue features an elderly Mrs. Bethune handing a copy of her legacy to two young black children. Mrs. Bethune is supporting herself by a cane given to her by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The statue was unveiled on the anniversary of her 99th birthday, July 10, 1974, before a crowd of over 18,000 people. The funds for the monument were raised by the National Council of Negro Women, the organization Mrs. Bethune founded in 1935.
Emancipation Memorial
The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman’s Memorial or the Emancipation Group, and sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent so-named memorial was built, is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
Designed and sculpted by Thomas Ball and erected in 1876, the monument depicts Abraham Lincoln in his role of the "Great Emancipator" freeing a male African American slave modeled on Archer Alexander. The ex-slave is depicted on one knee, with one fist clenched, shirtless and shackled at the president's feet.
The statue originally faced west towards the U.S. Capitol until it was rotated east in 1974 in order to face the newly-erected Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial.
The monument has long been the subject of controversy. According to information from American University:
If there is one slavery monument whose origins are highly political, the Freedman’s memorial is it. The development process for this memorial started immediately after Abraham Lincoln's assassination and ended, appropriately enough, near the end of Reconstruction in 1876. In many ways, it exemplified and reflected the hopes, dreams, striving, and ultimate failures of reconstruction.
Despite being paid for by African Americans, historian Kirk Savage in 1997 condemned it as "a monument entrenched in and perpetuating racist ideology" because of the supplicant and inferior position of the Black figure.