The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963.
During the march, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. About 250,000 people took part in the March; it is estimated that 200,000 were African American and 50,000 were white.
Demonstrator at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom The March was initiated by A. Philip Randolph (international president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL-CIO), who had planned a similar march in 1941. The threat of the earlier march had convinced President Roosevelt to establish the Committee on Fair Employment Practice and bar discriminatory hiring in the defense industry.
The 1963 March was organized by Randolph, Whitney Young (president of the National Urban League), Roy Wilkins (president of the NAACP), James Farmer (president of the Congress of Racial Equality), John Lewis (president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), and King (president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference). Bayard Rustin, a civil rights veteran and organizer of the first Freedom Rides in 1947, administered the details of the March. The March was not universally supported.
Some civil rights activists were concerned that it might turn violent, which could undermine pending legislation and damage the international image of the movement. The March was condemned by the Malcolm X, spokesman for the Nation of Islam, who termed it the "farce on Washington". The March began with an invocation by Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle (the Archbishop of Washington).
In addition to civil rights leaders, the speakers included photographer and writer Gordon Parks; labor leader Walter Reuther; Rabbi Joachim Prinz, Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos, and Rabbi Uri Miller; author James Baldwin; actors Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Marlon Brando; performers Josephine Baker and Eartha Kitt; and singers Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan. Martin Luther King was the final speaker of the day.
The March concluded with Rustin reading the March's ten demands, which included passage of civil rights legislation, school and housing desegregation, job training, and an increase in the minimum wage. Marchers surrounding the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall Although one of the officially stated purposes of the march was to support the civil rights bill introduced by the Kennedy administration, several of the speakers criticized the proposed law as insufficient. John Lewis said that without "meaningful legislation," Blacks would "march through the South.
" (His original speech, edited at the insistence of older leaders, had gone on: "through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground nonviolently.") Floyd McKissick read James Farmer's speech because Farmer had been arrested during a protest in Louisiana; Farmer had written that the protests would not stop "until the dogs stop biting us in the South and rats stop biting us in the North.
" The March is widely credited as a major factor leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the National Voting Rights Act of 1965.
News RSS