From MSN.com
Aug 22 — Perhaps no other event marks the peak of the Civil Rights Movement like the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
LIKE AN ORCHESTRA tuning its instruments, the march began as a series of disparate voices wrangling for change from all corners of the country, and culminated in one of the most exquisitely executed events in the history of social protest.
On Friday, August 22 and Saturday the 23 members of the civil rights generation and the hip-hop generation will come together to commemorate that first march, retrace its steps and — although much has been accomplished in the 40 years since the initial march — challenge the U.S. government to honor its promise of fair opportunities for all Americans. Coretta Scott King will witness the unveiling of a memorial to her late husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the Lincoln Memorial and, perhaps for at least a brief moment, some of the unanticipated glory of that first march will be recaptured. Other activities include a prayer vigil, teach-ins, singing, poetry and speeches from activists young and old.
TAKING A LOOK BACK
The 1963 march was the brainchild of A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who made the first calls for a massive Negro protest in the nation’s capital in 1941 to push for an end to discrimination in the armed services. That march was called off when President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to issue an executive order ending such discrimination at the 11th hour.
But by the early 1960s, it became clear that the archaic Jim Crow machinery of the South would not be brought down easily. After all, the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed the rights of full citizenship for all peoples born in the United States, was enacted into law more than 90 years earlier. Yet discrimination of Blacks continued in most facets of American life, making plain that, although the constitutional protection of Blacks’ rights was in place, the power of federal oversight was still needed to force many Southern states into submission.
The march helped bring that about. It united hundreds of thousands of people from all parts of the country and of all backgrounds - Black, White, Native American, young, old, rich and poor - who believed that America had a responsibility to uphold her promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all citizens.
The “Big Six” leaders behind the march, as they came to be known, were some of the most influential Blacks of their day. They included Randolph, who was the grandfather of it all, some 74 years old by the time the march took place; Whitney Young, Jr., then-president of the National Urban League; James Farmer, head of the Congress for Racial Equality; King; Roy Wilkins, then-president of the NAACP; and John Lewis, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who was just 23 at the time. Lewis is the only surviving member of the six.
WHO’S WHO IN ATTENDANCE
Numerous other civil rights leaders were in attendance, among them, famed Harlem preacher Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and the Rev. Walter Faunteroy. Celebrities such as Harry Belafonte and Mahalia Jackson also attended. (Faunteroy is one of the organizers of the 2003 march.)
The 1963 march culminated with King’s eloquent “I Have a Dream” speech, but its most important accomplishments lay in the legislative — not the rhetorical — arena. The march helped speed up and ensure the passage of the most important civil rights laws since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Prior to that time, Supreme Court rulings had mandated that the enforcement of the 14th Amendment be a state responsibility; the Civil Rights Act gave the federal government the power to step in and enforce it.
The Voting Rights Act paved the way for federal oversight of states’ voting machinery, which was particularly important in states like Mississippi and Georgia, which refused to allow the vast majority of Blacks the right to vote. The number of Black voters increased dramatically after its passage. For example, there were just 58,000 Blacks registered to vote in South Carolina in 1960, but by 1966, that number had reached 191,000. Alabama’s Black voters grew from 66,000 to 250,000 in the same period.
Yet the struggle was not over. From Detroit to Los Angeles, riots wrecked cities across the nation in the mid to late 1960s. By 1968, King, had been assassinated and the Vietnam War was in full swing. The rise of Black power, and its swift fall, followed, as did the splintering of the Black community with the onset of integration, with more affluent Blacks frequently moving into White areas, leaving poor Blacks behind in urban Ghettos.
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It's good to sit back and remember the sacrifices some people made so that we can enjoy the freedoms and equalities that we have today, and also to remind ourselves of how far we have yet to go.
Aug 22, 1963
Moderator: TheMachine
