The 1963 March on Washington, in which a quarter million people
demonstrated for civil rights on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial
in Washington, D.C., was the largest demonstration for human rights
the country had ever seen. Officially known as the March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the march was the idea of A. Philip
Randolph (1889–1979), the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters union, who had been a labor and civil rights activist for nearly
four decades.
The 1941 proposed march
Randolph had proposed the first March on Washington in 1941 during
World War II (1939–45), when, despite the accelerating war economy,
African Americans were barred from jobs in the war industry. When
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) failed
to act to remedy this situation, Randolph called for fifty thousand
African Americans to descend on Washington, D.C., in protest.
President Roosevelt turned to moderate civil rights leaders, such as
Walter White (1893–1955), the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to
help him ease the tensions, but Randolph refused to back down. African
American newspapers publicized the proposed march, and the estimated
number of potential protesters grew. Facing the prospects of an embarrassing march, in June 1941 President Roosevelt issued an executive
order calling for an end to discrimination in defense industries.
After 1941, the March on Washington group continued to meet
annually to discuss African American demands for economic equality. As
the African American civil rights movement emerged in the 1950s and
1960s, black leaders began to discuss and plan a new march. Their goal
was to prompt the federal government to act on pending civil rights legislation that was lagging in Congress. Chaired by Randolph and organized by fellow civil rights activist Bayard Rustin (1912–1987), the 1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom sought to bring more than
one hundred thousand people to the nation’s capital. Two top civil rights organizations, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
and the NAACP, put aside their historic differences to support the event.
Reluctant support
Randolph and Rustin set the date for the march for August 28, 1963.
The goals of the march were to call attention to the need for the passage
of President John F. Kennedy’s (1917–1963; served 1961–63) civil
rights bill; job training and placement for African Americans and an end
to job segregation; and desegregation of public schools by the end of
the year. The Kennedy administration urged the march’s leaders to
reconsider, arguing that the civil rights bill would have a better chance of
passing if blacks waited quietly. But when President Kennedy was told
that the march would go on as planned, he gave his reluctant support.
“I Have a Dream”
News of the planned march spread across the country. As the day drew
near, buses and trains arrived in Washington, pouring forth 250,000
demonstrators, nearly a quarter of them white. The attendance went far
beyond the organizers’ expectations. While the crowd waited for the
rally’s speakers, attendees listened to musicians, including folk poet Bob
Dylan (1941–), gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972), and popular folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Several speakers gave stirring addresses.
The featured speaker of the march, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
(1929–1968), electrified the audience with his “I Have a Dream” speech,
which has become one of the most famous speeches in American history.
In one of its many stirring moments, King 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: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we
are free at last!’”
A model of peaceful protest
The successful 1963 March on Washington represented the high point
of the first phase of the modern civil rights movement and expressed the
ideals and aspirations of nonviolent direct action. (See also Civil
Disobedience.) Following the march, Congress finally passed the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and, later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since
then, numerous groups of varying political stripes, including poor people, women, environmentalists, gays and lesbians, black men, Christian
men, and cancer patients, have attempted to use the March on
Washington as a model for delivering demands to the federal government. While none have achieved the success of the 1963 event, the
March on Washington continues to symbolize the hopeful possibilities
of nonviolent, mass-based protest in the United States.