The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August 28th 1963) was where Dr Martin Luther King, Jr gave his “I Have a Dream Speech”. Some 250,000 Americans of all colours marched to the Lincoln Memorial a hundred years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation – and one day after W.E.B. Du Bois died.
Demands:
- Pass the Civil Rights Bill.
- Desegregate all school districts.
- End discrimination in housing and employment or lose federal funding.
- Minimum wage above $2.00 ($15.23 in 2013 dollars).
- Enforce the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection of the law regardless of race).
- Full and fair employment.
Blacks in 1963 (and now):
- Poverty rate: 48% (now 28%, but still three times the White rate);
- Life expectancy: 7 years less than Whites (now 4);
- Unemployment rate: 2.5 times the White rate (now 1.9);
- Congress: 1% Black (now 8%. Blacks are 13% of the country).
Background: That spring 150,000 in Birmingham, Alabama protested police brutality and segregation. Police chief Bull Connor had them beat up – unarmed men, women and children! He set dogs on them, turned fire hoses on them. Shocking images appeared on television coast to coast and in newspapers all over the world.
Martin Luther King was arrested on Good Friday. He wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:
one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws…
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Protests turned violent, spreading to cities North and South.
President Kennedy got on television, called it a “moral crisis”:
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are … not yet freed from social and economic oppression.
He asked Congress to pass the Civil Rights Bill.
Hours later Medgar Evers was shot dead.
White Southern Congressmen blocked the Civil Rights Bill.
A. Philip Randolph, a Black labour leader, pushed the idea of a march on Washington to show public support for the bill. It was Randolph’s threat of a march on Washington in 1941 that got President Roosevelt to sign an executive order outlawing racial discrimination by war contractors.
President Kennedy told Black leaders to call off the march. They said they could not stop it even if they wanted to. So Kennedy did the next best thing: he got them to water it down.
That meant James Baldwin could not speak.
That meant John Lewis, the head of SNCC, could not say this:
We will march through the South, 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. We shall fragment the South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of democracy.
Instead we got Dr King saying this:
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama … will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
A few weeks later on a Sunday morning the Klan bombed a Black church in Birmingham, Alabama and killed four Black girls.
See also:
- Quoting MLK
- The basics: Jim Crow, Cointelpro
- 1961: Freedom Riders, Hank Thomas, Jim Zwerg, Mother’s Day in Anniston
- 1962:
- 1963: Medgar Evers, four Black girls
- 1964: Fannie Lou Hamer
- 1965: Selma, Voting Rights Act of 1965
- 1966:
- 1967:
- 1968:
- 1969: Fred Hampton
- 1970: The arrest of Angela Davis
Powerful and excellent post!
If only we had that kind of unity (activism) today ..
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[…] Demands:Pass the Civil Rights Bill.Desegregate all school districts.End discrimination in housing and employment or lose federal funding.Minimum wage above $2.00 ($11.73 in 2013 dollars).Enforce the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection of the law)Full and fair employment. […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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This was no day walk in the park.
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@ Matari
We will again, that is what they are afraid of. See how they are making these slave and servant movies and putting cops outside the theaters hoping we react? If we do that is less ppl to help and get united with. So I just encourage brothers and sisters to not take the bait, that is why they had cops out when the not guilty verdict for George and then the movie fruitvale station came out and now the butler, all to get us mad and react so we will be in the new slave system aka prison.
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ANd on that same day those girls were killed, Virgil ware was shot and killed while riding on his brothers handlebars by white teens. That day was a sad bloody day for black youth innocent lives taken too soon.
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Ms. Good
I really hope so! Thanks. : )
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Short and informative. As always, well done.
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My mom played with those little girls who were killed in Birmingham when she was little. She said it was terrible playing with them one day and they were gone another day.
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The lesson: greedy, selfish, hateful people are greedy, selfish and hateful. Expect nothing less.
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@ mstoogood4yall
Very true. Not to mention they are hoping we will just forget and move on.
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My parents plan on attending the anniversary celebration of the March on Washington this weekend. I would have been riveting to hear what James Baldwin had to say that day.
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Who would be good to speak on the 5oth anniversary? Toni Morrison?
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It is always the water blasting that gets me. The first time I saw it I was 10 in the library. I was the only black kid there and I could feel my bones shaking. It was then that I knew I didn’t understand Martin Luther King Jr. at all. What human doesn’t want to fight back it was like when we had to read “Sounder” and everyone was like the kid didn’t do anything.
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You would never know it from the way white racists spew statistics, but by far the hardest part of this post was the “Blacks in 1963 (and now)” part. I wanted figures on voter registration, for example, but could not find them for 1963 and now. Even figures for black poverty, a big issue in the 1960s, were not easy to find.
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Note that one of the demands was NOT welfare! What they wanted instead was full employment through an end to discrimination and:
You can read the demands in full here:
http://billmoyers.com/groupthink/have-the-demands-of-the-march-on-washington-been-met/
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@ Jefe
I vote for Angela Davis.
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Off topic, but any chance you would write an article about the racial implications of the Christopher Lane shooting? Seems like it got a fair amount of attention because a foreigner was involved.
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@ biff
Possibly. Thanks for the suggestion.
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It was indeed an historic time. Also in Birmingham at that time was a young Presbyterian minister, a man who knew the minister of the church that was bombed as well as the families of the “Four Little Girls”. About ten years prior to the march, he and his music teacher wife had a baby daughter. They wanted to name her after something musical, and they decided to use the musical term “con dolcezza”, which means “with sweetness”. From the same root for “dolcezza” we get things like “dolce” (the Italian word for dessert), “dulcimer” (the musical instrument), “la dolce vita”, etc.
They used this term to create a portmanteau: Condoleezza. Condoleezza Rice would grow up to become a concert pianist, a Stanford Professor, a respected academic, and, for several years, Secretary of State and then National Security Advisor.
I saw her speak at a local function a couple of months ago. In person she’s shorter than you would expect, but more attractive than she appears on television. She exudes the aura of being the smartest person in the room, while at the same time seeming down to earth and very human. A highly impressive individual.
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Both Condoleezza Rice and Angela Davis are from black middle-class Birmingham and shaped by the racist violence there. At the time of the church bombing Rice was 8 and Davis was 19. Davis was in France at the time studying, but when she heard the news it hit her like a ton of bricks.
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Remember Condoleeza Rice said: Jim Crow would be crushed under weight of its own gentility. So, police brutality, racist violence, water cannons and dogs employed against Black communities was genteel.
That Angela Davis and Condoleeza Rice are educated Black women from Birmingham, AL is where commonality ends.
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Nice how you put the links in chronological order. It is one way to look at the 60s.
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Are you certain Rice said that? I’ve seen versions of that statement attributed to her, but I’ve not seen verification.
What I have heard her say, in response to critics accusing her of not being “black enough” is something along the lines of: “I’ve been black all of my life. I don’t think I need anybody to tell me how to be black.”
It is interesting that Angela Davis and Condoleezza Rice both came from middle class Birmingham. Among other things, specifically as to the bombing, Condeleezza was in a nearby church and heard/felt the concussion. She also lost a childhood playmate. The event was physical and immediate. In those times, she watched her father spend sleepless nights armed and guarding their home against white violence.
At the same time, Angela was studying in France. The bombing to her was abstract and distant. Yet Angela Davis is the one who descrcibes been effected by the news as if it hit her physically.
Their ideological contrast reminds me of similar dialectic between, say, Malcolm X and MLK, Jr., or (in South Africa) the ANC and the AAPRP.
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John Lewis is the only person still alive who spoke at the March 50 years ago. He was 23 then, 73 now. He was then the head of SNCC. He was also a Freedom Rider, helped to lead the protest at Selma and is now a Congressman.
Lewis on the Zimmerman verdict:
That from someone who has seen so much!
Notice that the March took place eight years to the day after Emmett Till was lynched.
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I saw that Merlie Evers-Williams was supposed to attend on 28 Aug 1963, but could not. She is still alive. It would be great if she could attend this one.
I would love to have a talk with John Lewis. I also wish I could have attended the 50th anniversary of the first Freedom ride.
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I admire Congressman John Lewis, he is a great warrior, he has been fighting from the beginning, and he is still fighting. That is a real soldier fighting for justice.
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I would am interested in viewing Spike Lee’s film “4 Little Girls” about the young girls killed in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham on a Sunday morning. September 1963.
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I think I read something about Dr. King’s speech did not start out that way on August 28,1963. He began with a serious address he and others had crafted. I read Mahalia Jackson was sitting nearby and called out “Tell em about the dream, Martin”. And he gave the “I Have A Dream ” speech. His words are quite familiar in American oratory. Thank A. Philip Randolph for organizing this great historical event. These were true soldiers, we need more brave soldiers today like these soldiers for justice.
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In addition to the four little girls that died in the bombing of the church in Birmingham, there were two young boys that also died that day. Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson. They should have been acknowledged as well. I think it’s sad that their deaths weren’t recognized.
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Today is the anniversary of the church bombing in Birmingham, RIP to the 6 young people who were killed. May they rest in peace.
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Is it just me but does the orange pus bag and his flying monkey administration schedule his klan rallies during every historical event? The contrast of last night’s all white COVID-19 spreader and on the White House lawn with no social distancing and many in attendance were maskless, compared to the Black Americans attending the historic remembrance of The March On Washington today. I personally don’t want Trump commenting on this historical and important event in our history as Black Americans.
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