Fifty-five years ago today, 250,000 people peacefully participated in the monumental March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march advocated for the civil and economic rights of African Americans and is credited as being the catalyst to passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was considered a "triumph of managed protest" because there had been no arrests relating to the demonstration.
Despite the fact that African Americans had been legally freed from slavery, elevated to the status of citizens, and the men were given full voting rights at the end of the American Civil War, many faced continued social, economic, and political repression well into the 1960s and well into the 2010s. The
Jim Crow laws, which were pervasive in the South, ensured that African Americans remained oppressed. They experienced discrimination from businesses and the government, and were oftentimes prevented from voting through intimidation and violence. Twenty-one of the fifty states prohibited interracial marriage outright.
There were earlier efforts to organize a demonstration like the march, including the
March on Washington Movement in the 1940s. Growing racial tensions instigated the organization of the 1963 march. In Southern cities, violent confrontations broke out–most of the incidents involved white people retaliating against nonviolent protesters. Many activists wanted to march to Washington but they disagreed on how the march should be conducted: some called for a complete shutdown of the city through civil disobedience, and others argued against limiting their energies and protests on Washington. People were also critical of the Kennedy administration, as they believed it had not lived up to its promises during the 1960 presidential election.
The march was eventually held on the eighth anniversary of Emmett Till's murder. Till, 14, was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. Due to how brutal and violent his death was, and because his murderers were acquitted, Till became a posthumous icon of the civil rights movement.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited African American novelist James Baldwin, as well as a large group of cultural leaders, to meet in New York to discuss racial relations on May 24, 1963. The meeting, known as the Baldwin–Kennedy meeting was not a success, as the black delegation felt Kennedy did not understand the full scope of the nation's racial problems. Despite the meeting being a failure, it pushed the Kennedy administration to take action on African American's civil rights. President John F. Kennedy gave his famous
civil rights address on June 11, 1963, announcing to the nation that he would begin to push for civil rights legislation (the law would eventually become the Civil Rights Act of 1964). That night, Medgar Evers, a Mississippi activist who investigated Emmett Till's death, was murdered in his driveway, which escalated the nationwide racial tension. Ironically, Baldwin was prevented from speaking at the march because the group believed his comments would be too inflammatory.
A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin organized the march. Randolph was a leader in the civil rights movement, the America labor movement, and social political parties. Rustin was a leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights.
In June 1963, leaders from several different organizations formed the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership to coordinate funds and messaging. The leaders included Randolph, James Farmer, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. Wilkins and Young originally did not support Rustin as a leader for the march because he was a homosexual, a former Communist, and a draft resistor, though they eventually accepted him as a deputy organizer on the condition that Randolph act as the lead organizer and manage any political fallout. The Council eventually brought on four white men who supported their efforts prior to the march, including Walter Reuther, Eugene Carson Blake, Mathew Ahmann, and Joachim Prinz.
Many politicians were worried that bringing a large crowd to Washington would create "an atmosphere of intimidation" and lead to violence. Wilkins pushed for the organizers to rule out civil disobedience and to keep the march peaceful.
Despite many disagreements, the march organizers came together on a set of goals:• Passage of meaningful civil rights legislation
• Immediate elimination of school segregation
• A program of public works, including job training, for the unemployed
• A Federal law prohibiting discrimination in public or private hiring
• A $2-an-hour minimum wage nationwide (equivalent to $16 in 2017)
• Withholding Federal funds from programs that tolerate discrimination
• Enforcement of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution by reducing congressional representation from States that disenfranchise citizens
• A broadened Fair Labor Standards Act to currently excluded employment areas
• Authority for the Attorney General to institute injunctive suits when constitutional rights are violated
Some of the speakers included Roy Wilkins, John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Walter Reuther. Lewis's speech had to be edited to be more conservative and pro-Kennedy after his speech was priorly distributed and met with resistance, though many were angry at what they believed was the censorship of his speech.
"I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream–one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal" . . . I have a dream."Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech, in which he called for an end to racism, in front of the Lincoln Memorial. King was an activist and the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement until his death in 1968. He is known for helping advance civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience tactics.
April 4, 2018 was the fiftieth anniversary of King's assassination.King made the speech as a homage to Abraham Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address and it was timed to correspond 100 years after the
Emancipation Proclamation. Along with the Emancipation Proclamation, the speech invokes other pivotal documents in American history, including the
Declaration of Independence and the
United States Constitution. Towards the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text to give a partly improvised conclusion on the "I have a dream" theme, where he described his dreams of freedom and equality.
Although King's "I Have a Dream" speech is considered a highlight of the march and the civil rights movement, many more radical African American leaders condemned the speech, along with the rest of the march, for being too compromising. Nevertheless, it has had a lasting impression in history and pop culture, and it is often considered one of the most important and enduring speeches in American history.
None of the speakers at the march were women despite the protests from organizer Anna Arnold Hedgeman. Although Josephine Baker gave a speech before the official program began, women's presence in the official program was limited to a "tribute" by Rustin, where Daisy Bates briefly spoke. Gloria Richardson was on the program but when she arrived on stage, her chair with her name on it had been removed and the event marshal took her microphone away after she said "hello". Richardson, Rosa Parks, and Lena Horne were escorted away from the podium before Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke.
Additionally, demonstrators were divided by sex at the Washington Monument. Female leaders were asked to march down Independence Avenue while the male leaders marched on Pennsylvania Avenue with the media.A. Philip Randolph initially supported "Negro only" marches but believed that the march would create a more powerful image of unified black and white protesters. Organizers rejected the support from Communist groups to avoid being seen as radical, though some politicians claimed the march was Communist-inspired.
The FBI, of course, produced reports supporting that claim and called celebrity backers to inform them of the organizations' Communist connections and to urge them to withdraw their support in the days leading up to August 28, 1963.
Numerous black celebrities appeared, including Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, James Baldwin, Jackie Robinson, Josephine Baker, Sammy Davis, Jr., Ruby Dee, Diahann Carroll, and Lena Horne. Some of the white celebrities who lent their support and marched were Burt Lancaster, James Garner, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Gregory Peck, Rita Moreno, and Marlon Brando.
The performers at the march were Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Peter, Paul and Mary. The march was criticized for its choice of having mostly white performers.
Since 1963, the March on Washington has left a lasting legacy in American history and culture.
Politically, the march is credited with forcing the government into action on civil rights. It also marked a pivotal moment in voter alignment, as the Democratic Party gave up the Solid South, its support since the Reconstruction era among the segregated Southern states, and went on to take a high percentage of African American votes from the Republican Party.Despite that, the Economic Policy Institute launched a series of reports in 2013 (the fiftieth anniversary of the march) where they analyzed the goals of the original march to assess how much progress has actually been made. They echo A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin's assertion that civil rights cannot transform citizens' quality of life unless accompanied by economic justice. They go on to explain that many of the march's primary goals, including housing, integrated education, and widespread employment at living wages, have not yet been accomplished. In conclusion, they argue that although there have been legal advances since 1963, many African Americans still live in concentrated areas of poverty where they receive inferior education and suffer from widespread unemployment.
If it has been fifty-five years since the March on Washington, sixty-three years since Emmett Till's death, and one hundred and fifty-five years since Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. I think it is safe to say that in the last century and a half, we have made some steps in the right direction for civil rights, but we are
nowhere near equality for all. Nowadays, for every teeny-tiny step forward taken, there is a hard shove backwards. Perhaps in another fifty-five years?
Fun & not-so-fun facts• The March on Washington preceded the 1965
Selma Voting Rights Movement, which led to the passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965•
During the early stages of planning, the march was considering including an "Unemployed Worker" as one of the speakers; unfortunately, the position was eliminated, which furthered the criticism of the march's classism• The march was also originally planned to take place outside the Capitol Building but was moved to be less threatening to Congress and because organizers believed it would be more fitting to have the gathering underneath the gaze of Abraham Lincoln's statue
• There were numerous bomb threats leading up to the march: many activists received bomb threats at their homes and offices, the
Los Angeles Times received a threat against their headquarters unless it printed a message calling the president a "N*gger Lover", and five planes were grounded on the day of the march
• King's attorney and adviser, Clarence B. Jones, has since stated that the FBI had been listening in to every conversation the group had about the march; two days before the march, there was a FBI memo titled "Negro Question", which stated: "[King] stands head and shoulders above all other Negro leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of Negroes. We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation"
• Organizers fought for an expensive sound system so attendees could hear; the system was sabotaged the night before the march but it was successfully rebuilt overnight by the US Army Signal Corps after Walter Fauntroy called Robert F. Kennedy and demanded the government fix the system to avoid a fight with the marchers
•
Around 50 members of the American Nazi Party attended to stage a counter-protest but were dispersed by the police•
Although the march didn't start on time since its leaders were meeting with Congress, the assembled crowd began to march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial without them; the leaders met up with the demonstrators, linking arms ahead of the crowd, to be photographed "leading the march"
Click
here to watch James Blue's
The March (1963) courtesy of the US National Archives.
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