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Published in The Seattle Times online on July 2, 2026
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on July 5, 2026
Exhibit reveals sweeping swath of roles, purposes for U.S. flag
By Clay Eals
What events today bring out more than 50,000 people in our city? Certainly Seafair parades and hydro races. Pro football and soccer, too.
On Independence Day 1920, a Central Labor Council-sponsored Pageant of Democracy at Woodland Park hit that mark.
From downtown, celebrants paraded to today’s north Seattle zoo site, where patriotic reenactments featured actors from 19 cultures, from Indigenous to Greek, with nighttime fireworks at nearby Green Lake.
The afternoon spectacle was intentionally over the top, given the recent flu epidemic and end of World War I, plus tensions lingering from the 1919 Seattle General Strike. One element was ubiquitous — the U.S. flag.
“From downtown buildings, myriad American flags fluttered in the breeze while the crowds that lined the streets and parks wore knots and ribbons of the national colors,” reported the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
This weekend, as the country reaches 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, the Museum of History & Industry opens an ambitious, layered, flag-focused exhibit, “For Which It Stands,” aptly referencing the Pledge of Allegiance.
“There’s pride, and there’s protest, and there’s reverence, and there’s belonging, and honoring sacrifice, and carrying forward America’s ideals, all these different ways that people have used the flag,” says Mikala Woodward, the museum’s curator of exhibits and engagement. “We want to give people that range to think about and put themselves into it.”
Examples in the exhibit abound:
- A flag from “The Boys in the Boat” U.S. men’s crew that triumphed at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
- A photo of a mother holding the burial flag of her son, a Japanese American Nisei soldier who died in Europe during World War II while relatives were incarcerated in America. “It’s about expressing loyalty and sacrifice to the nation,” Woodward says, “even when it’s mistreating you and your family.”
- A flag borrowed from the volunteer Oso Fire Department uncovered in the town’s catastrophic 2014 mudslide. “It became this symbol of hope and the community coming together to keep looking and finding people and heal and carry on.”
- A flag flown upside down in the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) zone in 2020, with spray-painted words “love” and “rage.”
The exhibit includes places for reflection and interaction. It asks visitors to finish the sentence: “I pledge allegiance to …” The hope is to spur universal introspection.
“It makes you feel different if you’re carrying a flag,” Woodward says. “You think about how you’re representing something, you’re expressing something, you’re connecting yourself to a place or a group or a statement and what it really means to you.”
WEB EXTRAS
Big thanks to Mikala Woodward , Wendy Malloy, Allie Delyanis, Gigi Allianic and Ariel Rathbun for their invaluable help with this installment!
To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.
Below, you will find 1 additional video and 6 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.
Also, here is a detailed description of the precise location of the 1920 Pageant of Democracy, as outlined by Ken Kroeger, Woodland Park Zoo project manager:
The exact location where the 1920 “Pageant of Democracy” was performed is a historic area of the park that has completely transformed over the last century.
The stage was built on what was then known as the Great Lawn, which served as the majestic, wide-open focal point of the original 1908 Olmsted Brothers design for Woodland Park. According to historic records of the event and park layout, the specific spot sat directly north of the park’s early tennis courts and wading pool, giving a massive crowd of spectators plenty of room to sit on the grass before the stage.
If you were to stand in that exact spot today, you would find yourself right in the heart of the modern Woodland Park Zoo exhibits.
Where it sits on the modern map
Over the decades, the Great Lawn was steadily enclosed as the zoo expanded its habitats and the city bisected the park to build Aurora Avenue (Highway 99) in 1932. The specific footprint where the pageant’s temporary stage, the costumed labor union performers, and the horses stood is now split across two primary areas of the zoo:
The African Savanna Exhibit: The southern expanse of the historic Great Lawn—where the crowd sat and looked northward toward the stage—is the exact landscape footprint occupied by the giraffes, zebras, and gazelles today.
The North Meadow: The northernmost remnant of that original lawn is still a wide-open grassy space. It is the area used today for summer evening concerts, community events, and picnics.
The tennis courts mentioned in the 1920 event accounts (where the revelers danced later that evening into the night) were located near the southern boundary of the lawn, roughly where the South Entrance and the Rose Garden (established just two years later in 1922) sit along N. 50th Street.
Because the entire central swath of the park was a unified open meadow in 1920, the performers had the expansive, sweeping backdrop needed to assemble all 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence and an entire cavalry of historical figures before thousands of gathered Seattleites.
To visualize where the photographer stood to capture this historic moment at the Woodland Park Zoo, you have to look at how the stage and audience were oriented on the old Great Lawn.
Because the temporary wooden stage was constructed with its back to the north (near the modern-day North Meadow area), the performers on stage were looking directly south across the expansive grass. The massive crowd of spectators sat on the sloping lawn south of the stage, facing north.
The camera’s position
The photographer capturing Joan of Arc on her horse with the stage directly behind her was positioned just south of the stage, facing slightly north/northwest.
On a modern map of the zoo, this precise vantage point places the camera at the northern edge of the African Savanna exhibit, right on the boundary line where it transitions toward the central paths and the North Meadow. The camera was aimed northward, capturing the performers elevated on the stage with the natural tree line of the park’s western ridge framing the background.
