Vietnam Veterans Memorial Dedication: Maya Lin's Black Granite Wall of Healing

On November 13, 1982, following a moving five-day national salute, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was officially dedicated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., near the Lincoln Memorial. The creation of the memorial was spearheaded by wounded infantry veteran Jan Scruggs and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, who believed that the men and women who served in the deeply divisive Vietnam War deserved national honor separate from the political controversies of the conflict. In 1981, a blind national design competition drew 1,421 anonymous entries; the jury unanimously selected entry #1026, submitted by Maya Lin, a 21-year-old undergraduate architecture student at Yale University. Lin's design—two 246-foot polished black Bangalore granite walls sinking gently into the earth in a shallow "V" pointing toward the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial—was initially met with fierce opposition by traditionalists. Yet upon its dedication, "The Wall" produced an immediate, profound spiritual catharsis. Inscribed chronologically with the names of over 58,000 service members who died or remain missing, the reflective black stone forces visitors to see their own living faces reflected alongside the names of the fallen. It transformed public art worldwide and remains the most visited, emotionally moving memorial in the United States.