60 years to the day, local author tells story of March on Washington
March was much more than Martin Luther King's "I have a dream"
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Scott LaMar/WITF
Airdate: August 28th, 2023
On August 28, 1963 — sixty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the iconic “I have a dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Some 250,000 people crowded on the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument focusing on employment and other discrimination, civil rights abuses against African Americans and support for the Civil Rights Act that the Kennedy Administration was attempting to pass through Congress.
At the time, it was the largest civil rights demonstration in the nation’s history.
But how did the March on Washington come together and did it have an impact?
Michael G. Long has co-authored a new book More Than a Dream — The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and has also edited another new book Bayard Rustin – A Legacy of Protest and Politics.
marquis Lupton/WITF
Michael Long
On The Spark Monday, Long said the march helped to get the Civil Rights Act passed but added,”The march also had an impact in the sense that it created a template for future marches. One of the things that Rustin did was to focus on massing numbers. He wanted the Black masses to be present for the marching. Philip Randolph, the director of the march, and they turned out 250,000 on that day. There was some controversy because he’d cut out civil disobedience for the day. Originally, the march was scheduled as a two-day program, which would include a massive sit in in Congress. And Rustin eventually cut that out, focusing on amassing 250,000 people, which is what he did, and future movements, so that there was big numbers as an important thing. What Rustin did on that day was to serve notice on Congress and on the White House and on the Supreme Court. You couldn’t be a member of those institutions and not comment on the March on Washington for jobs and freedom.”
President John F. Kennedy opposed the march as Long described,”He said that the march would intimidate people. We don’t want to put on a big show. Those were his exact words. And he really pressured them to call off the march. And Philip Randolph, who had organized the 1941 March on Washington to discuss to end discrimination in national defense industries, said to Kennedy quite point blank, there will be a march, Mr. President. And Kennedy left the 90-minute meeting frustrated. And I love that point because it shows that the Black civil rights leaders were in charge of the civil rights movement and civil rights legislation at that point. They were the ones who were pushing it. They were the ones who had the leverage.”
Long said Dr. King inserted the “I have a dream” segment of the speech, “King left behind his prepared comments and launched in his dream a refrain. And that’s when the people really got into the march. They were as flat as King’s flat speech up to that point. But once he started to recount the dream, they were captivated. It was like a religious revival. If you watch footage, people in the march are raising their hands. They’re throwing their heads back, they’re closing their eyes. They’re thanking the heavens.”
