His Dream,
Our Stories
THE LEGACY OF THE
March on Washington
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Introduction by Lester Holt, NBC News
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5
THE VIEW FROM THE SPEAKER’S PODIUM WAS
BREATHTAKING.
Luther King Jr. prepared to deliver the final speech of a long day in front
A sofDr.theMartin
Lincoln Memorial, he gazed out on a sight the likes of which Washington, DC,
6
had never seen before. Spread out in front of him were men, women and children in the
hundreds of thousands – peaceful, hopeful, determined, their spirits still strong after
hours under an unforgiving summer sun. They had marched along the National Mall
earlier in the day, and now they were sitting or standing in whatever space they could
find, in front of a shrine to the man who, a century earlier, had signed the Emancipation
Proclamation, transforming the Civil War into a crusade for human freedom.
They were gathered as far as King’s eyes could see, two long columns of humanity on
either side of the Mall’s Reflecting Pool, then, beyond the pool, one mass of people
stretching all the way to the Washington Monument, nearly a mile from the speaker’s
podium. They had come to the nation’s capital by cars, buses, trains and planes, intent on
showing the country and the world that they would no longer stand for the systematic
denial of basic civil rights.
her home in Newark, Ohio, 9-year-old Julieanna Richardson was glued to a small
I nblack-and-white
television.
Julieanna and her family sat for hours through the day’s speeches, watching, listening,
shouting for joy as they soaked in the images from faraway Washington.
She had never seen so many black faces in one place – there were only about a
thousand African-Americans among her town’s 41,000 residents.
(4:16)
7
n the Mall, Edith Lee-Payne, of Detroit, felt overwhelmed. Less than five feet tall, the
middle-school student had a better view of the marchers’ feet than she did of the
Lincoln Memorial.
Still, she had a clear vision of why she was there. Her mother, an entertainer, told her
of the discrimination she suffered in hotels and theaters, with their separate entrances for
black people.
That was why Edith was on the Mall with her mother on this historic day. It was her
12th birthday, and as she stood mesmerized by everything happening around her, a
photographer nearby took a picture as she held a banner celebrating the march with the
words “I Was There” printed in the left-hand corner.
Years later, the iconic picture was reproduced in a calendar commemorating black
history.
O
(4:16)
than a dozen speakers had already addressed the great throng before it was Dr.
M ore
King’s turn. Clergy representing Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews offered
prayers for justice and equality. Young African-Americans who came of age in the 1950s
took their turn, as did older, more established leaders of the civil rights movement and
labor unions.
Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson performed an old spiritual, “I Been ’Buked and I Been
Scorned,” that reminded the crowd of the cruelties heaped upon black Americans – and
8
the resilience of the community in the face of rebuke and scorn. After her performance,
Rabbi Joachim Prinz came to the podium to deliver his message of support. But he
couldn’t resist an ad-lib tribute to Jackson. “I wish I could sing,” he said.
Many of the marchers were tired by now. It had been a long, hot day. Some in the crowd
took off their shoes and put their feet in the reflecting pool. The crowd seemed to be
losing its energy.
It was time for Dr. King’s speech. As he stepped forward to face the crowd, the long arm
of a state trooper standing to his left reached across the podium to adjust the
9
microphones. King hesitated for a moment, then nodded ever so slightly. And then he
began. His voice was clear, his cadence familiar. He was the acknowledged leader of this
movement and of this moment, on his way to winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his
nonviolent campaign against hate and bigotry.
The massive crowd fell silent as he began to speak. Tens of millions around the nation
– around the world – stopped and watched and listened.
He spoke for nearly 15 minutes. His words made history.
history was not made by words alone. The commitment and courage of those who
B utendured
the punishing sun that day on the Mall, of those who gathered in front of
television sets and radios to hear words they would never forget, of those who would go
on to demand equality and justice throughout the nation, would, in a short time, change
laws and attitudes that had been entrenched in America since the first slave ships landed
on her shores some 400 years before. Their actions created the enduring legacy of the
March on Washington.
10
11
OFFICIALLY, IT WAS KNOWN AS THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON
FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM, A TITLE THAT REFLECTED THE
EVENT’S EMPHASIS ON ECONOMIC JUSTICE AS WELL AS CIVIL
RIGHTS.
meant opportunity, the chance to create a better life and to pass down the values of
J obs
hard work and achievement. Freedom meant the right to vote, the right to an
education, the right to dream.
The March on Washington is remembered today as a seminal moment in the history of
the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The unforgettable images from that day – of hundreds of thousands of peaceful
demonstrators gathered on the Mall, of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his famous
speech – are part of the national photo album of the transformative and turbulent 1960s.
But the idea of a great march of African-Americans in the nation’s capital was first
broached decades earlier. It was rooted in the experience of union organizing and
collective action on behalf of black workers.
12
13
In the 1930s, few African-Americans were better known than A. Philip Randolph, the
founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominately AfricanAmerican labor union.
The porters worked in specially designed “Pullman cars” that provided passengers with
sleeping quarters on long-haul rail trips.
Randolph gained fame in the 1920s when he organized the porters and demanded that
Pullman, the company that manufactured and operated the sleeping cars, recognize the
union.
When the company refused to negotiate, Randolph threatened to lead a strike and a
march on Washington to draw attention to the porters’ cause.
But the strike – and the march – were called off when union leaders realized they were
not strong enough to issue such a direct challenge to white supremacy in the private
sector.
Nevertheless, the aborted confrontation marks the true beginning of the 1963 March on
Washington.
14
and another pioneering civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin, founded an
R andolph
organization called the March on Washington Movement, which sought to marshal
African-American political power behind efforts to combat racial discrimination and
segregation.
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16
war broke out in Europe in 1939 and the United States began to build up its armed
A sforces
and defense industry, A. Philip Randolph and his allies called on President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt to issue an order banning discrimination in defense plants.
Roosevelt hesitated, leading Randolph to proclaim that he and his fellow AfricanAmericans were simply fighting for their constitutional rights. Revisiting his strategy
from the 1920s, he called for a march on Washington of 10,000 black Americans.
Word spread from church to church, union hall to union hall, women’s club to women’s
club throughout the new black communities of the industrial North and Midwest, where
Southern blacks had resettled during the Great Migration in the 1910s and ‘20s.
The Roosevelt White House, intent on presenting a united front against the threat of
war with Germany, Japan or both, began to panic.
17
The president intervened personally, inviting Randolph and a colleague to the White
House. According to Randolph’s account of the meeting, the president said he simply
couldn’t issue an executive order banning discrimination in defense plants. Other groups
would ask for similar treatment, he said.
The president turned to Randolph. “Now, Phil,” he said, summoning his considerable
charm, “I want you to call off this march.”
Randolph was not charmed. “I can’t do it,” he said, “unless you issue the order.”
Within a matter of days, FDR signed Executive Order 8802, which mandated the “full
and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination
because of race, creed, color or national origin.” A new federal agency, the Fair
Employment Practices Commission, was created to make certain the defense industry
complied with the president’s order.
Randolph cancelled the march. He and his allies had made their point.
18
19
AFRICAN-AMERICANS DID NOT HELP WIN A WAR AGAINST
NAZI RACISM ONLY TO SEE WHITE SUPREMACY HOLD FAST AT
HOME.
of thousands of African-Americans contributed to the war effort, working in
H undreds
defense plants at home and fighting on the battlefields of Europe and Asia. When the
war was over, the community made it clear that it would not allow a return to the racial
20
status quo, especially in the South. Jim Crow, the system of laws and customs mandating
strict segregation, remained inj force throughout the old Confederacy and in many other
states. Lunch counters, motels and other public accommodations turned away black
customers. Public transit operators sent black riders to the back of the bus. A parched
African-American dared not drink from a water fountain reserved for whites. And Dixie’s
political system was rigged so that African-American voting power was nonexistent. Any
African-American who defied the system did so at great peril – protests were certain to be
met with terrifying consequences.
In the spring of 1947, a former U.S. Army lieutenant named Jack Roosevelt Robinson
challenged one of the nation’s most public symbols of white supremacy: major league
baseball. Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, ended
segregation in the national pastime and signaled the beginning of a new era of
confrontation between an inspired African-American community and the upholders of
Jim Crow. Within two years, Jackie Robinson was one of the nation’s most admired
public figures.
21
With blacks demanding acceptance and justice, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a
challenge to end racial segregation in the public schools of Topeka, Kansas. The chief
counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Thurgood
Marshall, presented the case against school segregation, which was the law of the land in
many states. In May 1954, the Court issued its verdict in the case of Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka: “Separate but equal” school facilities, the Court unanimously ruled,
were unconstitutional. They denied black children equal protection under the law,
guaranteed to them under the 14th amendment to the Constitution.
Brown v. Board of Education struck at the heart of white supremacy and inspired a
generation of young African-American activists. While the ruling was confined to school
segregation, the Court’s decision, based on the argument of the NAACP, was a legal
clarion call against all laws and practices that separated the races and forced AfricanAmericans into separate but almost always unequal facilities.
22
23
the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old department-store
O nseamstress,
boarded a bus at the corner of Montgomery Street and Dexter Avenue in
downtown Montgomery, Alabama.
She walked through the rows of seats reserved for whites before finding a seat in the
first row of the bus’ black section. After several stops during the busy rush hour, the
white section in the front of the bus was filled.
The driver demanded that Parks and three other African-Americans surrender their
seats to white passengers who were standing.
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Years later, the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery would argue that God had a hand in choosing
Parks as a symbol of African-American resistance to segregation and oppression.
24
(4:17)
from the intersection of Montgomery and Dexter lived a young clergyman, his
N otwifefarand
their newborn daughter. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old
pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was new to Montgomery, but the city’s
African-American community turned to him for leadership as it prepared a response to
Parks’ arrest. King’s church became an instant headquarters for a new challenge to
segregation: a boycott of the city’s bus system.
The Montgomery bus boycott proved to be a triumph of organization and solidarity –
the city’s buses were empty as the movement’s leaders set up a network of volunteer
drivers to carry commuters to their destinations.
The boycott made headlines around the world, drawing attention to King and
demonstrating the power and determination of the nation’s African-American
community.
Finally, after the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama could not enforce segregation on
public transportation, the boycott ended in late December 1956. Rosa Parks and every
other African-American citizen of Montgomery were allowed to sit anywhere they wished.
25
old ways were changing, but African-Americans still faced hostility and hatred. As a
T he
young college student in Memphis after the Montgomery boycott, Johnnie Turner
often studied late into the night and then boarded a bus that would take her home.
She sat directly behind the driver because she remembered the humiliation of being
forced to the back of the bus in earlier days.
During her ride, after all other African-Americans got off the bus and she continued on
for several more stops, she was subjected to a barrage of abuse from the white driver and
passengers.
She remained in her seat and chose not to fight back, in part because she believed in
nonviolence, but also because she believed her life was in danger.
26
(4:17)
counters were next. In early 1960, African-Americans launched a new tactic
L unch
against segregation: the sit-in. On February 1, four black students in Greensboro, North
Carolina, seated themselves at a lunch counter reserved for whites only. They refused to
move and were arrested. The civil rights movement had a new cause.
27
Throughout the South, African-Americans took seats at segregated lunch counters.
News coverage of the sit-ins, especially televised images of whites taunting and abusing
the protestors, aroused sympathy for the movement around the world. Like the
Montgomery bus boycott, the lunch-counter sit-ins were centered on a seemingly simple
issue: the right to order a meal and be served just like anyone else. But the sit-ins showed
that for African-Americans in the segregated South, nothing was simple – not even eating
lunch.
The sit-ins that began in Greensboro were a milestone for many young blacks in the
South. “That was the inciting point that caused this volcano to erupt, this racial volcano,”
recalled Lonnie King, who was living in Atlanta at the time and organized a civil rights
group called the Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights.
28
(4:17)
Houston, a young clergyman named Bill Lawson was working in the Baptist Student
I nCenter
of Texas Southern University when students approached him about launching a
protest of their own, modeled on the Greensboro sit-ins.
Lawson was astonished.
Students shouldn’t be in the streets – they should be studying, he said. But Lawson
soon realized how mistaken he was. He joined the effort.
Meanwhile, students from three African-American colleges in Atlanta – Atlanta
University, Spelman College and Morehouse College (Dr. King’s alma mater) – launched
a demonstration outside Rich’s Department Store, one of the city’s best-known retailers.
29
(4:18)
store’s famed restaurant, the Magnolia Room, refused to serve blacks. Brenda Cole,
T he
a student at Spelman, eagerly joined the boycott of Rich’s, having been inspired by the
sit-ins that began in Greensboro.
She and her fellow protesters were joined at Rich’s by Dr. King himself, who was
promptly arrested and jailed for his role in the protest.
The sit-ins and boycotts demonstrated the power of ordinary people armed with
nothing more than a righteous cause. The movement’s leaders, especially Dr. King, drew
their inspiration from the teachings of the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, who
emphasized the importance of nonviolent civil disobedience when faced with injustice
and cruelty.
30
(4:14)
the inauguration of a young new president, John F. Kennedy, in 1961, the civil
W ith
rights movement stepped up its nonviolent confrontation with segregation, hoping
that the White House would push civil rights to the top of the nation’s priorities.
But the Cold War and other foreign policy issues commanded the new president’s
attention. If anything, he seemed concerned that the civil rights movement would
embarrass the United States in its rivalry with the Soviet Union.
Rather than wait in line for the president’s attention, the movement continued to force
the issue. The Congress of Racial Equality, led by James Farmer, announced in early 1961
that it would challenge segregation in private bus terminals and on the buses themselves.
Young blacks and whites, soon dubbed the “Freedom Riders,” boarded buses
throughout the South to show that the region’s interstate public transit system remained
segregated despite federal court decisions that banned the practice.
Freedom Riders were attacked and badly mauled, often as local law-enforcement
officials looked on or, even worse, participated in the violence. Amid the outrage, Dr. King
called for a “full-scale, nonviolent” attack on segregation.
31
Ground zero for this new confrontation was Birmingham, Alabama, known as the
nation’s most segregated city. Andrew Young, a 29-year-old activist who worked with Dr.
King at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, understood the significance of
bringing the movement to a city known for its brutal enforcement of Jim Crow laws.
The city’s chief of public safety was Eugene “Bull” Connor, who had closed the city’s
parks rather than comply with a court order to integrate them. He would stop at nothing.
32
(4:13)
full weight of the civil rights movement now pressed on Birmingham and its Chief
T he
of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor. The movement’s leaders turned the city’s 16th
Street Baptist Church into a command center as men, women and children prepared to
take to the streets to demand justice.
Mamie Chalmers was a 22-year-old Birmingham resident who had endured the
injustices and the indignities of life in that sharply segregated city. She joined the crowds
at 16th Street Baptist, and soon was arrested for committing an act of civil disobedience:
She tried to buy a sandwich in a bakery that refused to serve blacks.
City officials ordered the arrest of Dr. King, his friend and colleague Ralph Abernathy,
and other leaders. But rather than intimidate the marchers, the city’s action only made
them more determined.
In early May, Chalmers, released after a short stay in jail, took part in a large protest
moving through Birmingham’s streets. Bull Connor ordered the city’s public safety
departments to attack.
33
The nation – the world – watched as adults and children were assailed by German
shepherds and thrown to the street by the spray of high-pressure fire hoses.
Mamie Chalmers was among those in the line of fire. The force of the spray on her head
left her permanently deaf in one ear.
34
(4:16)
after the demonstrations in Birmingham, the state’s governor, George Wallace,
A month
openly defied a court order to integrate the University of Alabama, a public institution.
The Justice Department dispatched federal marshals to supervise the registration of
two black students, but Wallace continued to insist that there was no place for black
people in the state’s university system.
On June 11, 1963, Wallace stood in front of a doorway to the university’s Foster
Auditorium, blocking the students from entering the building to enroll.
35
President Kennedy had seen and heard enough.
Later that evening the president addressed the nation from the Oval Office and declared
civil rights to be a “moral” issue. He vowed to introduce a new civil rights act, and he
unequivocally denounced segregation.
The message was clear: The federal government stood with the civil rights marchers
who were putting their lives on the line for equality.
36
June 23, more than 100,000 people gathered in Detroit to participate in the “Walk to
O nFreedom,”
the largest civil rights demonstration to date in the North.
One of the march’s organizers, the Rev. Nicholas Hood, senior minister at the
Plymouth United Church of Christ, sought to bring attention to the city’s mostly white
police force. African-Americans, he would later say, were routinely “pushed around and
mistreated” by the police.
So many others agreed it was time for change.
People such as the Rev. Wendell Anthony, a president of the local chapter of the
NAACP; Janet Huff, an activist; Derek Blackmon, an NAACP member; Rev. Horace
Sheffield; Ron Scott, a spokesman against police brutality; and Rudy Simons, a white man
fighting for human rights, all felt this was the moment for African-Americans in the
North to demand to be treated equally.
Organizers invited Dr. King to attend the walk, although some were skeptical of the
movement’s best-known leader.
That doubt began to melt when King thrilled demonstrators with a speech many would
never forget.
37
“And so this afternoon, I have a dream,” he said. “It is a dream deeply rooted in the
American dream.
He continued, “I have a dream that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and
Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to
live together as brothers.”
(4:16)
38
39
July 2, 1963, the nation’s top civil rights leaders gathered in New York City at the
O nrequest
of A. Philip Randolph, the union organizer and civil rights activist who had
been working for racial and economic justice since 1917, more than a decade before
Martin Luther King Jr. was born.
Randolph believed the time was right to carry out an idea he first discussed in the
1920s: a march on Washington.
He had announced the idea for a march weeks earlier, but thus far other civil rights
leaders had kept their distance.
Randolph was on his own while the nation’s attention was riveted on the terrifying
images from Birmingham.
But now, after Kennedy’s speech and the sympathetic press Bull Connor and his men
had helped generate with their cruelty, momentum was building for a massive show of
the movement’s strength and resolve.
The men who met with Randolph, including Dr. King, Bayard Rustin (another
movement veteran who worked with Randolph during the 1930s), James Farmer of the
40
Congress of Racial Equality, Whitney Young of the Urban League, Roy Wilkins of the
NAACP, and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),
were not always united on strategy and often were divided by personality and turf.
Wilkins, for example, worried that the group Dr. King led, the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, was competing with his NAACP for dues-paying members.
Wilkins was skeptical of Randolph’s idea for a march in the nation’s capital, but Farmer
was enthusiastic. King thought President Kennedy’s speech on civil rights was brilliant;
Lewis thought it was too little, too late. Despite their differences, all present agreed to
move ahead.
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41
(4:15)
The key to resolving those disputes, he found, was his father’s patience – he let people
have their say, and then brought people together with common goals. It was now official:
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was scheduled for the National Mall in
Washington, D.C., on August 28.
The march’s organizers estimated that about a hundred thousand people would make
the journey to the capital in late August. In the meantime, there were details, so many
details. What about extra security and crowd control? The organizers recruited off-duty
police officers, whom they designated as marshals to help keep order. How much would
the march cost?
Rustin estimated that organizers would have to raise about $65,000, but it soon
became clear that more would be needed to ensure success. Calls for additional funds
went out to churches and labor unions.
rights leaders were summoned to the White House on June 22 to talk strategy
C ivil
concerning the civil rights bill Kennedy had just submitted to Congress.
How could the White House secure the votes necessary to pass the bill, the most
sweeping civil rights legislation in the nation’s history?
Kennedy told the leaders that the planned march would hurt the prospects for passage.
Street protests would alienate members of Congress who might otherwise be inclined
to support the bill, Kennedy said.
42
Labor leader A. Philip Randolph countered Kennedy’s argument with one of his own:
“Mr. President,” he said, “they’re already in the streets.”
Dr. King, James Farmer and other leaders echoed Randolph’s remarks, saying that a
peaceful display of black determination was critical.
Kennedy rethought his position and agreed to support the march. He would reach out
to allies and encourage their support as well.
The March on Washington now had the backing of the leader of the Free World.
Through July and into August, thousands of organizers mobilized families, churches,
community groups, union locals, entire neighborhoods – spreading the word that now
was the time and Washington was the place.
The movement’s leaders recruited the support of one of the nation’s most important
white labor leaders, Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers union.
Prominent white clergy also signed on, as did white politicians from the North.
the day approached, buses began rolling out of Philadelphia, Chicago, New York,
A sAtlanta,
Birmingham and Richmond, and onto the nation’s gleaming new interstates.
43
They rolled out of sleepy Southern towns, and onto the narrow lanes of rural America.
They were heading to the nation’s capital, where politicians had been holding hearings on
the new civil rights bill until they fled Washington’s notoriously humid summer.
The plan was for participants to assemble at the Washington Monument and then
march to the Lincoln Memorial to hear the speeches. All of the program’s speakers were
to deliver a text of their remarks to the march’s organizers by Tuesday, August 27 – the
day before the march. But one speaker arrived late and was unable to provide an advance
copy of his speech – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
44
came to life early on the morning of August 28, 1963. Some marchers were
W ashington
already in place on the Mall – they had spent the night there, sleeping under the
stars. D’Army Bailey was one of them. Another young veteran of the movement, Bailey
was expelled from Southern University in Louisiana for leading boycotts against
segregation in Baton Rouge during the early 1960s.
As Bailey awoke, thousands of fellow marchers were on their way to one of the most
famous pieces of real estate in the United States – the National Mall.
45
(4:15)
It was a weekday, a work day in Washington, and the highway that would one day come
to symbolize the nation’s capital and its culture, the Beltway, was not quite finished. Local
roads quickly were clogged with long lines of buses.
Closer to the Mall, in hotel lobbies within the District of Columbia’s borders, some of
the most famous personalities of the era were preparing for the short journey to the
Washington Monument.
Diahann Carroll, Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary,
Harry Belafonte, Mahalia Jackson and many other socially conscious celebrities were in
town to lend their names and their talents to the cause.
46
was scheduled to start at 11.
T heAsmarch
the organizers began arriving, they were confronted with a disturbing spectacle:
Green grass. Lots of green grass.
The Mall was relatively empty. Where were all the promised buses? They weren’t sure
what to expect.
Anxiety gave way to relief by midmorning as the caravans arrived and disgorged
thousands of marchers. Nearly two-dozen special trains, chartered for the occasion,
started pulling into Union Station around 8 a.m.
By about 9:30, the crowds were thick enough to begin a pre-march program of speeches
and music, introduced by actor Ossie Davis.
Joan Baez sang “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of the civil rights movement.
Folk singer Odetta and the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary followed. Bob Dylan
performed an original song written in memory of the slain civil rights worker Medgar
Evers. Jackie Robinson, who brought his son David to the Mall, delivered a short speech.
Singer Lena Horne spoke just a single word to the crowd: “Freedom!” Many of the
marchers were in tears – and the march had yet to begin.
47
(4:14)
event seemed more like a festival than a protest. And while most of the crowd was
T he
African-American, the march attracted many whites, including David Auspitz.
He was the son of a Jewish immigrant who owned one of Philadelphia’s best-known
delis and once won an award for hiring an African-American to slice the lox.
48
(4:18)
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50
on the platform, John Lewis, the young leader of SNCC, quietly stewed over a
E lsewhere
last-minute change to his speech.
Lewis, reflecting the impatience of his peers, had prepared a speech declaring that the
civil rights movement would not wait for the president, his Justice Department or
Congress to take action on behalf of African-Americans.
The civil rights bill, Lewis wrote, was too little, too late.
The White House received an advance copy of the speech and was outraged.
The Catholic archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle, announced that he
would not deliver an invocation as scheduled unless Lewis toned down his remarks.
Randolph, the old warhorse of the movement, finally convinced Lewis to make the
changes in the name of unity.
Lewis didn’t like it, but the implied criticism of Kennedy was removed.
The speech he gave, even after the last-minute editing, still retained the power of
youthful passion.
Watching the march on television in his home in the suburbs of Washington, Steny
Hoyer was astonished by Lewis’ words and his confidence.
Years later, the two men would become friends and colleagues in the U.S. House of
51
Representatives.
(4:14)
Marian Anderson, the Famed Classical Singer, Was Scheduled to Begin the Formal
Program by Singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
But she couldn’t get to the stage on cue, and the men running the program insisted on
getting started. The choice of Anderson had been poetic – a quarter-century earlier, the
blue-blooded Daughters of the American Revolution had barred her from performing in
Washington’s Constitution Hall, which the organization owned.
Eleanor Roosevelt had then arranged for Anderson to perform a concert on the steps of
the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, 1939.
Now she was to return to the scene of her greatest triumph.
But when she failed to show, a young music student named Camilla Williams
performed the national anthem.
When Anderson finally appeared on stage, she sang the folk-spiritual “He’s Got the
Whole World in His Hands.”
Anderson’s presence and her voice added to the sense of magic – the sense of history –
that enveloped the crowd as the afternoon wore on.
Many who had suffered soul-wrenching discrimination were in tears.
Rosa Parks, Dorothy Height and other women who played key roles in the civil rights
52
movement were introduced and applauded, but none was asked to speak. The podium was
reserved for the movement’s male leaders and their key allies.
After John Lewis spoke, Walter Reuther stepped to the podium, representing the link
between civil rights and economic justice.
later, Miguel Foster, director of Civil and Human Rights for the UAW, recalled
Y ears
that Reuther’s support for the March on Washington and the civil rights movement
was based on principle, but was controversial with the union’s rank and file.
The Urban League’s Whitney Young also connected civil rights to broader questions of
economic and social justice, imploring the crowd to work for good jobs, decent medical
care, quality schools and well-maintained parks and recreation facilities.
Although the crowds were larger than anticipated, nearly everybody could hear the
speakers and singers.
(4:14)
speaker followed speaker, some in the crowd were withering in the heat. Joan Lee
A sNelson,
a 16-year-old who had been arrested during a protest two years earlier, was
absorbed in the sights and sounds of the march, “all the people there, black, white, all
colors, shapes, sizes … . It was the most powerful experience I’ve ever encountered, to this
day,” she recalled.
53
But she began feeling weak, and then she fainted.
She never did hear the program’s final speech, but she would never forget how
strangers came to her aid, lifting her and passing her from hand to hand until she was
brought to rest in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
(4:15)
Hayden-Smith was not at the Mall that afternoon – she was at work elsewhere
C ecelia
in Washington.
Her 90-year-old white employer couldn’t quite understand why there was nothing on
television except images of the march.
She was worried, too, that the marchers would start a riot.
Even after Hayden-Smith explained, the older woman remained puzzled. Why were
black people so unhappy?
It was nearly time for Dr. King, who would be introduced to the crowd by A. Philip
Randolph, the father of the march. Randolph called King “our moral leader.”
The crowd applauded, but there were some gaps now in the mass of humanity. Some
buses had to leave. There were trains to catch. And the sun was oppressive.
54
(4:17)
more than 200,000 people were left when King began speaking. He opened by
S till,
talking about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.
He moved on, in clumsy language, to argue, “America has defaulted on [its] promissory
note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.”
Not everybody was impressed at first, including Darryl Walker.
From her seat near the podium, Mahalia Jackson implored King with a stage whisper to
talk about his dream – she was there in Detroit, weeks earlier, when King delivered his
prose poem describing his vision of a just America, a better America.
55
(4:15)
not certain whether or not King heard Jackson, but he ignored the rest of the speech
I t’s
he’d written and began to preach.
“I have a dream,” he said, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created
equal.’
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and
the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down at the table of brotherhood.”
Previous speakers were impressive, but Dr. King’s poetry and delivery were of a higher
order. His words reached well beyond the Mall in Washington to TVs and transistor
radios throughout the nation.
Everyone could sense that these words transformed the movement, linking civil rights
to the fundamental promises and values of the American people. And though many
recognized the words, the delivery, the imagery, having heard previous renditions of Dr.
King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, all could feel there was something more within it this
time.
For Jesse Jackson, the speech’s imagery was a reminder of the nation’s broken
promises, of its failure to live up to its ideals.
One hundred years had passed since the Emancipation Proclamation, and yet freedom
– true freedom – remained an illusion.
56
(4:18)
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59
in 1962, Carla Harris is too young to have firsthand memory of the March, but she
B orn
has carried with her images of the event throughout her life.
Now a managing director at the Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley, Harris has never lost
sight of the goals and vision of that day in August, 1963.
(4:19)
Marc Morial, who would one day follow in his father’s footsteps to become mayor of
New Orleans, was just 5 years old when Dr. King invited the world to share in his dream.
But through recordings of King’s magnificent speech, Morial developed an unbreakable
connection with the March.
60
(4:17)
March on Washington was an astounding success, inspiring tens of millions around
T he
the world.
With magnificent words and absolute discipline, the speakers and the marchers
countered hatred with righteousness, and transformed the demand for civil rights into
one of the 20th century’s greatest social protest movements.
Oppressed and alienated groups around the world drew courage from the sight of
African-Americans marching for their rights.
They saw in Dr. King’s dream a dream of their own, a dream that delivered on the
promise of equality and justice. The March inspired not only those who witnessed it, but
those who passed on its message to future generations.
For some, however, the March on Washington inspired only hatred and fear.
Less than three weeks after the March, four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted a
bomb in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
The bomb exploded during a “Youth Sunday” service, killing four girls and wounding
nearly another two dozen children.
The act of terrorism horrified the nation.
61
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62
(4:14)
63
bombing gave new urgency to the drive to pass the civil rights legislation then
T he
before Congress.
After President Kennedy’s assassination in November, the new president, Lyndon
Johnson of Texas, made civil rights his top domestic priority.
Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964, forever ending the era of Jim Crow
laws and legally sanctioned racial discrimination.
A year later, he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, another landmark of the civil
rights era.
The March on Washington transformed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into an
international leader for social justice.
The gay liberation movement was just beginning in the early 1960s; activists such as
Mark Segal saw King as a leader who spoke not only for African-Americans, but for other
marginalized groups in the United States as well.
64
(4:16)
Dr. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and continued to campaign for equal rights
and equal opportunity.
And as President Johnson sent more and more troops to Vietnam, King would emerge
as a forceful critic of America’s war in that country.
65
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(4:15)
66
67
MEET THE AUTHOR TERRY GOLWAY
Terry Golway, Ph.D., is the director of the Kean University Center for History, Politics and
Policy in Union, N.J. A former member of the New York Times Editorial Board, former
city editor of the New York Observer, and former national columnist at America
magazine. He is the author of several books, including Together We Cannot Fail, a study
of the speeches of Franklin Roosevelt, Fellow Citizens, the Penguin Book of Inaugural
Addresses, co-written with Robert Remini, Washington’s General: Nathanael Greene and
the Triumph of the American Revolution, Let Every Nation Know, a study of John F.
Kennedy’s speeches, co-written with Robert Dallek, So Others Might Live, a history of the
Fire Department of New York, For the Cause of Liberty, a history of Irish nationalism,
and The Irish in America, a companion book to the PBS series. He lives in New Jersey.
68
HIS DREAM, OUR STORIES: THE LEGACY OF THE MARCH ON
WASHINGTON
Produced by Peter Costanzo for NBC Publishing and Comcast NBCUniversal
Videos produced by Comcast Local Media Development
Production Services provided by Anthony Werhun, Cornerstone Pictures, Inc.;
Congressional Media Group; PikasFilm
Post Production provided by David & David Productions
Additional Video and Audio Edits by Diogenes Marchena and Grace Media Works
Cover by Deena Warner Design
Comcast NBCUniversal would like to thank everyone who made this project possible,
especially those who shared their stories of sacrifice and hope in the name of equality.
NBC Publishing would like to thank the following: Sheila Willard, Karen Buchholz, Paul
Wright, Kim Phan, Nicholas DeAngelo, Jason Villemez, Lisa Spagnuolo Melillo, David
Dennison, Michael Ruger, Ruben Reyes, Jennifer Angle, Michael Pleckaitis, Jean
Roseman, Steve Chung, Michael Takiff, Lisa Chambers, Sean Grace, Kristi Koistinen,
Megan Richcreek, Austin Kirschenmann, Beth Middleworth, Ron Severdia, Steve
McKinney, Terry Golway, Rob Yarin, Michael Mauro, Kevin Bianchi, Clara Fon-Sing,
Michael Fabiano, Cheryl Gould, and Lester Holt.
Audio provided by the Library of Congress
His Dream, Our Stories: The Legacy of the March on Washington may not be reproduced
in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
recording or video, without written permission from NBC Publishing and Comcast
NBCUniversal.
Copyright © 2013 NBC Publishing
Enhanced ePub: 978-1-938069-97-0
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For more information, please visit us at www.nbcpublishing.com.
Developed by M etrodigi
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NBCUniversal and Comcast family of properties.
For more information, please visit us at www.nbcpublishing.com.
Developed by M etrodigi
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All photos obtained from the Associated Press except on the Title Page, which are
featured courtesy of the National Archives-OPA.
70