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THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

Years of Struggle

The 1963 March on Washington, in which a quarter of a million people demonstrated for civil rights on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial, was the largest demonstration for human rights that the country had ever seen. It was the idea of A. Philip Randolph, the aging founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, who had been a labor and civil rights activist for nearly four decades. Randolph had previously organized such a march in 1941 to demand more jobs for blacks in the wartime defense effort; when President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to issue an executive order calling for an end to discrimination in defense industries, Randolph called off the demonstration. But in the summer of 1963, with both job opportunities for African-Americans still lingering woefully behind those for whites and images of the Birmingham riots burned into his imagination, Randolph began organizing a new march.

Reluctant Support

Randolph and Bayard Rustin, deputy director of the march, set its date for 28 August. The goals of the march would be to call attention to the need for the passage of Kennedy's civil rights bill; job training and placement for African-Americans and an end to job segregation; and integration of the nation's schools by the end of the year. The Kennedy administration urged the march's leaders to reconsider; the civil rights bill, it was argued, would have a better chance of passing if blacks waited quietly. But when he was told that the march would go on as planned, Kennedy gave his reluctant support.

I Have a Dream

News of the planned march spread across the country, and as the day of the march drew near buses and trains arrived in Washington, pouring forth 250,000 demonstrators, nearly a quarter of them white. The attendance far exceeded what the organizers of the march had anticipated. While the crowd waited for the rally's speakers, musical personalities including Bob Dylan; Mahalia Jackson; and Peter, Paul and Mary per-formed. Several speakers gave stirring addresses. The featured speaker of the march, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that has become one of the most famous in American history. "I have a dream," he told the gathered crowd. He prayed for the day "when all God's children …will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Tree at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!' "

An Image of Hope

It is difficult to determine how much of an impact the march had on civil rights policy in the government in Washington. It did, however, offer to the nation an image of blacks and whites together, giving much-needed hope to a nation that had seen too much racial strife in the past.