“Did You Know?”
Myths and Facts About the 1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
1. Was the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom the first national
demonstration in Washington, D.C. led by civil rights organizations?
a. No, there were multiple national demonstrations by civil rights organizations in
Washington, D.C.
b. No, there was a march a few years before that, but it was small and inconsequential.
c. Yes, the 1963 March on Washington was the first planned national demonstration by civil
rights organizations in Washington, D.C.
d. Yes, there were previous plans for a national demonstration by civil rights organizations
but they never came to fruition.
2. How long before the event did the six major civil rights organizations meet
and agree to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
together?
a.
b.
c.
d.
A year
Six months
Two years
Two months
3. Which of the following was not one of the demands of the March on
Washington?
a. A national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living.
b. An end to police violence and vigilante terrorism against civil rights protesters.
c. Enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment--reducing Congressional representation of
states where citizens are disenfranchised.
d. A massive federal program to train and place all unemployed workers--Negro and White-on meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.
4. Daisy Bates, a NAACP organizer in Little Rock, Ark., was one of two women
to speak (briefly) at the 1963 March on Washington. Although neither was on
the program, who was the other woman who spoke?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Diane Nash, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Myrlie Evers, activist and wife of Medgar Evers.
Angela Davis, Black Panther and noted political prisoner.
Josephine Baker, singer, dancer, and member of the French Resistance.
5. The main organizer of the March on Washington, Bayard Rustin, has been
omitted from much of the Civil Rights Movement’s history for which of the
following reasons:
a.
b.
c.
d.
He was gay.
He had been a Communist.
He was a war resister.
All of the above.
6. Which black leader attended the March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom but neither spoke nor is well known as having attended?
a.
b.
c.
d.
W.E.B. DuBois, intellectual and co-founder of the NAACP.
Malcolm X, leader of the Nation of Islam.
Langston Hughes, Harlem Renaissance poet.
Ella Baker, SNCC advisor.
7. Was this the first time Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech invoking the
now famous phrase “I Have a Dream?”
a.
b.
c.
d.
Yes, this was the first time he prepared a speech saying “I Have a Dream.”
No, most of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches included him saying “I Have a Dream.”
No, Martin Luther King, Jr. had used the phrase “I Have a Dream” a few times before.
Yes, the words “I Have a Dream” were an on-the-spot improvisation that Martin Luther
King, Jr. said for the first time at the March on Washington.
8. How was the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) involved in the lead up to
the March on Washington?
a. They provided security for the March.
b. They collected information, spied on civil rights leaders (including Martin Luther King,
Jr.), and spread misinformation.
c. They collected information on the Klu Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party to prevent
any attacks against the March.
d. Not at all.
9. Organizers of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom asked which
speaker to leave out some of the radical content from his organization’s
speech?
a. Martin Luther King, Jr., President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
b. Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP).
c. John Lewis, Chairperson, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
d. Walter Reuther, President, UAW; Chairman, Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO.
10. What other Civil Rights Movement events of note occurred in 1963?
a. The death of WWII veteran Clyde Kennard, who was jailed for trying to attend Mississippi
Southern College.
b. In Mississippi, 80,000 African Americans cast votes in a statewide "Freedom Ballot."
c. The Children’s Crusade in Birmingham where children were arrested by the thousands and
filled the jails.
d. All of the above.
11. The crucial element enabling progress in winning civil rights was:
a.
b.
c.
d.
Grassroots activism and organizing.
National civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. or Roy Wilkins of the NAACP.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The federal government.
12. During most of the 20th century, Blacks were prevented from voting by:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Intimidation, economic retaliation, and violence
“Poll taxes” that many poor people could not afford
Legal devices like the “grandfather clause”
Literacy tests
All of the above
13. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed exactly one year after he gave a
speech on:
a.
b.
c.
d.
voting rights
school integration
fair housing
Vietnam War
14. African Americans were not the only group fighting for equality in the 1960s
and 1970s. Which of the following groups were also fighting for equal rights
and/or self-determination?
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Chicano/Mexican Americans
Native Americans
Asian Americans
Gays/lesbians
All of the above
If you like the quiz, please share it and make a donation to Teaching for Change so that we
can continue to develop and share resources on the people’s history of the Civil Rights
Movement. Quiz prepared by Tristan Brosnan and Elizabeth Behrens (volunteers) and
Teaching for Change staff.
Email Teaching for Change at [email protected] with corrections and/or
additions.
“Did You Know?”
Myths and Facts About the 1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
ANSWERS
1. Was the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom the first national
demonstration in Washington, D.C. led by civil rights organizations?
Answer: a, No, there were multiple national demonstrations by civil rights
organizations in Washington, D.C.
A. Philip Randolph founded the March on Washington Movement, a movement that was started in the early
1940s with the aim of desegregating the arms manufacturing industry during World War II. Members of the
March on Washington Movement planned for a national demonstration in Washington, D.C. in 1941, but
called it off after President Roosevelt issued an executive order banning segregation in the arms industry.
Roosevelt issued the order after a meeting with Randolph where he became convinced that Randolph could
pull off the march, which threatened to bring 100,000 black people to Washington, DC, using civil
disobedience to shut down the city.
In October of 1958, 10,000 people marched in Washington, D.C. as part of the Youth March for Integrated
Schools. Harry Belafonte, renowned performer and activist, led a group of students during the march to
picket at the White House. They intended to speak with President Eisenhower, but were denied access and
instead left behind a list of demands for the president.
The following year another national youth march was organized, this time bringing out 26,000 people. Key
organizers included Martin Luther King, Jr. Jackie Robinson, Ruth Bunche, Daisy Bates, Roy Wilkins, and
Charles Zimmerman.
2. How long before the event did the six major civil rights organizations meet and
agree to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom together?
Answer: d, Two months
The original plan for the March on Washington was outlined by organizer Bayard Rustin in January of 1963
and soon adopted by the Negro American Labor Council (NALC). Throughout the spring of 1963, more
organizations pledged their support for the march, including the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Initially, two of the largest civil rights organizations, the NAACP and the
Urban League, didn’t support the March.
It wasn’t until July 2, less than two months before the date of the march,
that six of the major civil rights organizations met and agreed to organize
the march together.
The fact that the march could be organized so quickly was due to multiple
factors including the groundwork established since 1941 by A. Philip
Randolph; the planning begun in January of 1963 by Rustin and the
Negro American Labor Council (NALC); Rustin’s skills as an organizer;
and decades of grassroots organizing all over the country.
Fifteen hundred community based organizations—churches, unions,
women’s groups, youth groups, and other civil rights organizations—
helped to organize, recruit, arrange transportation, and raise funds for the
March on Washington. At least 50,000 participants were brought by
churches alone and unions brought almost as many.
The participation of roughly 250,000 people was a product of countless
community based and national organizations.
3. Which of the following was not one of the demands of the March on
Washington?
Answer: b, An end to police violence and vigilante terrorism against Civil Rights
protesters.
Despite the police brutality and vigilante violence against nonviolent civil rights activists, especially in the South, the March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom demands did not call for
an end to the abuse.
Many of the demands focused on labor issues, including a
minimum wage act and a call for jobs for the unemployed. The
organizers knew that full civil and human rights for African
Americans depended on access to jobs, education, housing, and
health care.
In addition to the churches, religious organizations, and civil
rights organizations involved in the march, the United
Automobile Workers (UAW) and the Negro American Labor Council sponsored and helped organize the
march. One of the main organizers of the March on Washington, who was also the founder of the March on
Washington Movement, A. Philip Randolph, was a labor leader who helped found the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters.
4. Daisy Bates, a NAACP organizer in Little Rock, Ark., was one of two women to
speak (briefly) at the 1963 March on Washington. Although neither was on the
program, who was the other woman who spoke?
Answer: d, Josephine Baker, singer, dancer, and member of the French Resistance
From left to right: Daisy Bates, Diane Nash Bevel, Rosa Parks, Gloria Richardson
While both Daisy Bates and Josephine Baker spoke, neither was listed as a speaker on the official program
and neither were allowed to speak for long. This absence of women’s voices was a stark contracts to the
central role that women played in the Civil Rights Movement, and in the preparations for the March on
Washington in particular.
As Jeanne Theoharis wrote in The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks: “As magnificent as the day was, the
lack of recognition for women’s roles was readily apparent, and Rosa Parks was increasingly disillusioned
by it. No women had been asked to speak. Pauli Murray had written A. Philip Randolph criticizing the
sexism. Anna Hedgeman had also objected. Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro
Women, pressed for a more substantive inclusion of women in the program. Their criticisms were
rebuffed.” Instead, as Theoharis explained, “a ‘Tribute to Women’ would highlight six women—Rosa
Parks, Gloria Richardson, Diane Nash, Myrlie Evers, Mrs. Herbert Lee, and Daisy Bates—who would be
asked to stand up and be recognized by the crowd. Daisy Bates introduced the tribute to women, a 142word introduction written by John Morsell that provided an awkwardly brief recognition of women’s roles
in the struggle for civil rights. . . .”
After some discussion, the march organizers agreed to let
Josephine Baker give brief opening remarks before the
start of the program. Baker was born in the United States
but had moved to France, becoming a singer and dancer
of international fame. During the German occupation of
France, Baker assisted the Free French movement as a
spy and courier for the resistance to the Nazis. During the
1950s she was an avid supporter of the Civil Rights
Movement from abroad, and returned in 1963 to speak at
the March on Washington, wearing the French military
uniform she was awarded for her work with the French
resistance.
Josephine Baker at the March on Washington, 1963
Given the limited representation of women, historian
William Jones noted in an interview with Gwen Ifill that “Some people suggested actually picketing
Randolph when he was preparing for the march. Hedgeman, Height, and other women decided to not make
an issue of it right at the march. But then, the night after the march, they actually called a meeting at the
national headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women, which was the organization that Dorothy
Height headed. And at that meeting, they actually planned a series of meetings that, as I explain in the book
[The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights], actually culminated
in the formation of the National Organization of Women. And it really became a catalyzing moment in the
rebirth of a feminist movement in the United States.” See and read full interview here.
5. The main organizer of the March on Washington, Bayard Rustin, has been
omitted from much of the Civil Rights Movement’s history for which of the
following reasons:
Answer: d, All of the above.
Bayard Rustin was a lifelong activist and political
organizer. When Bayard was a child, his family was
politically active in the NAACP and organized against
Jim Crow. When Rustin went to college in New York
City in the 1930s, he joined the Youth Communist
League and organized with the campaign to free The
Scottsboro Boys. Rustin later joined the Religious
Society of Friends (Quakers) and the pacifist
organization the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR).
During World War II Rustin, a pacifist, refused
induction into the military and served two years in
prison as a result. Rustin was also a gay man and when
his sexual orientation was revealed, he was fired from
Bayard Rustin at blackboard.
his position at FOR. Rustin then began working with
the War Resisters League and went on to help organize
the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr.
For nearly six decades Rustin organized and protested against injustice. But despite his amazing work in
the Civil Rights Movement, he is often erased from history because he had been a Communist, a war
resister, and because he was gay.
6. Which black leader attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
but neither spoke nor is well known as having attended?
Answer: b, Malcolm X
Malcolm X was the charismatic leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI)
who advocated black self-determination. Elijah Muhammad, the head
of the NOI, forbade members of the NOI from attending the March of
Washington and Malcolm X called it the “farce on Washington.”
Despite Elijah Muhammad’s orders, Malcolm X attended the March on
Washington, speaking to the press about his opposition to the March,
while speaking in private with a number of civil rights leaders.
W.E.B. DuBois, the African American intellectual leader and founder of
the NAACP, died the night before the March on Washington in Ghana.
7. Was this the first time Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech invoking the now
famous phrase “I Have a Dream?”
Answer: c, No, Martin Luther King, Jr. used that phrase before, including in a
speech in Detroit two months earlier declaring, “I Have a Dream.”
On June 23, 1963, roughly two months before the March on
Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the Walk to
Freedom in Detroit, Michigan. The Walk to Freedom was the
largest civil rights demonstration to date with 125,000 people
marching for an end to police brutality and segregation in the
South and for access to housing, education, and better wages
in the North.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said:
“I have a dream this afternoon that one day right here in
Detroit, Negroes will be able to buy a house or rent a house
anywhere that their money will carry them and they will be
able to get a job. Yes, I have a dream this afternoon that one day in this land the words of Amos will
become real and ‘justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’”
8. How was the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) involved in the lead up to the
March on Washington?
Answer: b, They collected information, spied on civil rights leaders (including
Martin Luther King, Jr.), and spread misinformation.
The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, began gathering
information on civil rights leaders as early as 1961 when
activists began to organize Freedom Rides. In the fall of
1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy approved
wiretaps on all of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s telephones.
The FBI even wrote threatening letters to King with the
aim of coercing King to step down from his position as
the head of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC).
James W. Loewen notes in Lies My Teacher Told Me: “In
August 1963 Hoover initiated a campaign to destroy
Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement.
With the approval of Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy, he tapped the telephones of King’s associates,
bugged King’s hotel rooms, and made tape recordings of
King’s conversations with and about women. The FBI
then passed on the lurid details, including photographs,
transcripts, and tapes, to Sen. Strom Thurmond and other
white supremacists, reporters, labor leaders, foundation
administrators, and, of course, the president…King
wasn’t the only target: Hoover also passed on
disinformation about the Mississippi Summer Project;
other civil rights organizations such as CORE and
SNCC; and other civil rights leaders, including Jesse
Jackson.”
9. Organizers of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom asked which
speaker to leave out some of the radical content from his organization’s
speech?
Answer: c, John Lewis, Chairperson, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC)
John Lewis was the chairperson of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a youth
civil rights organization that fought on the frontlines to
dismantle Jim Crow in the U.S. Many members of SNCC
helped write the speech Lewis planned to give.
Some of the organizers of the March on Washington
were uncomfortable with what they considered the
radical content of the SNCC speech and asked Lewis to
change it. The original speech included reference to the
“black masses,” “revolution,” and called the Kennedy
administration’s Civil Rights bill “too little, too late.”
Lewis and other SNCC staff agreed to make changes in the speech, mainly because of their respect for Mr.
Randolph, who expressed his strong desire that the march not fall apart because of internal discord.
10. What other Civil Rights Movement events of note occurred in 1963?
Answer: d, All of the above.
Textbook mentions of the modern Civil Rights Movement highlight
1963 as the year of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
and Dr. King’s speech “I Have a Dream” speech. Occasionally, they
will also reference the Children’s Crusade and the bombing of the
16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., or the murder of
Medgar Evers in Jackson, Miss., as isolated acts of resistance and
racism.
Yet, it was a pivotal year as direct action, voter registration, and
important strategic shifts occurred nationwide after several years of
active and public struggle. Writer James Baldwin referred to the
events, 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, as the
“latest slave rebellion.”
A deeper understanding of these events, their interconnectedness (domestically and internationally), and the
antecedent and subsequent events helps students “read” history and their contemporary world with a keener
eye toward coordinated action.
For a list and description of some of these events, see http://www.civilrightsteaching.org/civil-rightsmovement-history-resources
11. What other Civil Rights Movement events of note occurred in 1963?
Answer: a, Grassroots activism and organizing.
Doug Smith and Sandy Leigh
participate in voter registration
canvassing, by Herbert Randall,
1964. Provided by the McCain
Library and Archives, University of
Southern Mississippi
Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker
address participants at a rally for the
MFDP to be seated at the 1964 DNC.
(AP Photo)
Gloria Richardson facing off the National
Guard, Cambridge, Maryland, May 1964.
Photo by Fred Ward
Reprinted with permission of Herbert
Randall.
Inspiring leaders, large mass demonstrations, and eventually federal
civil rights legislation and enforcement all contributed to changes
toward greater equality, but grassroots organizers laid the essential
foundation of the movement. Largely unacknowledged in textbooks,
they performed the un-glamorous, painstaking, and often dangerous
work of building trust, commitment, and collective action toward
local victories.
As described in I’ve Got the Light of Freedom by Charles Payne:
The leaders were ordinary women and men–sharecroppers,
domestics, high school students, beauticians, independent farmers–
committed to organizing the civil rights struggle by house, block by
block, relationship by relationship.
CORE pickets Penny’s
Department Store in Berkeley,
Calif., December, 1963.
The young organizers who were the engines of change in the state
were not following any charismatic national leader. Far from being
a complete break with the past, their work was based directly on the
work of an older generation of activists, people like Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Amzie Moore,
Medgar Evers, Aaron Henry. These leaders set the standards of courage against which young
organizers judged themselves; they served as models of activism that balanced humanism with
militance.
While historians have commonly portrayed the movement leadership as male, ministerial, and welleducated, Payne finds that organizers in Mississippi and elsewhere in the most dangerous parts of the South
looked for leadership to working-class rural Blacks, and especially to women. Payne also finds that Black
churches, typically portrayed as front runners in the civil rights struggle, were in fact late supporters of the
movement.
12. During most of the 20th century, Blacks were prevented from voting by:
Answer: b, All of the above.
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Lauderdale
County Meeting at First Union Baptist Church, Meridian
Photo by Mark Levy.
A Philip Randoph at the Freedom School Convention in
Meridian, Miss. Photo by Mark Levy.
After the Civil War, many African Americans took grave risks to the right to vote, encountering relentless
and multifaceted white resistance. While there were important pockets of black voting strength in the South
(primarily in urban areas) during Reconstruction, it was not until the mid-1960s that the Civil Rights
Movement was able to decisively turn the tide against black disenfranchisement. One of the best ways to
learn about the grassroots work of the Civil Rights Movement is to read the accounts of voter registration
campaigns, including the role of Freedom Schools. Here one can learn about the strength and determination
of the people who literally risked their lived to exercise their legal right to vote.
13. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed exactly one year after he gave a speech
on:
Answer: d, Vietnam War.
King’s ”Beyond Vietnam” speech was delivered at the
Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his
assassination. Civil rights leaders urged King not to speak
out on the Vietnam War, but he said he could not separate
issues of economic injustice, racism, war, and militarism.
About the photo: April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New
York City. Left to right: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel,
historian Henry Steele Commager, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., Dr. John Bennett (President of Union Theological
Seminary in NYC). Photo by John C. Goodwin.
14. African Americans were not the only group fighting for equality in the 1960s
and 1970s. Which of the following groups were also fighting for equal rights and/or
self-determination?
Answer: e, All of the above.
Photo: David Amram. The Longest Walk, 1978. Muhammad Ali, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Floyd Red Crow Westerman,
Harold Smith, Stevie Wonder, Marlon Brando, Max Gail, Dick Gregory, Richie Havens and David Amram at the concert
at the end of the Longest Walk, a 3,600-mile protest march from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., in the name of the
Native rights.
Too often history is taught as segmented, isolated incidents in time. Traditionally, the Civil Rights
Movement is viewed solely as a struggle for black Americans, by black Americans. Actually, the Civil
Rights Movement was a struggle for democracy which inspired oppressed people nationally and
internationally. There are many powerful examples of domestic and international solidarity throughout the
20th century.