History of the March on Washington

Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. A special edition of our show beginning now as we recognize that today is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington that gave us Martin Luther King's iconic I Have a Dream speech. In just a second, we're going to take a different tack to commemorate the anniversary and tie it to today. We're not going to play the I Have a Dream excerpt like you're probably hearing elsewhere today.

We're going to focus more on the larger context of the march and on organizer, A Philip Randolph, most well-known as a labor, as well as civil rights leader who was founding president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He was also a New Yorker much of his life, attended City College, lived in Harlem, and other New York things. He was a mentor to Dr. King in nearly twice his age, 74 at the time of the March on Washington compared to King's what would he have been, he would have been 34 or 33.

The designer of the idea of a March on Washington at all in the modern sense was A Philip Randolph 27 years earlier. When he threatened a big March on Washington in 1941 to protest discrimination in the defense industry and a piece of largely forgotten history, he actually got President Franklin Roosevelt to enact some anti-discrimination policies in exchange for calling off the planned 1941 March on Washington. He was back as a director of the one in '63 and he gave his own stirring seven minutes speech.

I thought for something different and important and a really good listen, here is the full seven-minute and seven-second speech by A Philip Randolph from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 60 years ago today.

A Philip Randolph: Fellow Americans, we are gathered here in the largest demonstration in the history of this nation. Let the nation and the world know the meaning of our numbers. We are not a pressure group, we are not an organization or a group of organizations, we are not a mob. We are the advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom.

This revolution reverberates throughout the land, touching every city, every town, every village where Black men are segregated, oppressed, and exploited, but this civil rights revolution is not confined to the Negro, nor is it confined to civil rights, for our white allies know that they cannot be free while we are not, and we know that we have no future in a society in which six million Black and white people are unemployed and millions more living poverty, nor is the goal of our civil rights revolution merely the passage of civil rights legislation.

Yes, we want all public accommodations open to all citizens but those accommodations will mean little to those who cannot afford to use them. Yes, we want a Fair Employment Practice Act, but what good will it do if profit-generating automation destroys the jobs of millions of workers, Black and white? We want integrated public schools, but that means we also want federal aid to education, all forms of education. We want a free democratic society dedicated to the political, economic, and social advancement of man along moral lines. Now, we know that real freedom will require many changes in the nation's political and social philosophies and institutions.

For one thing, we must destroy the notion that Mrs. Murphy's property rights include the right to humiliate me because of the color of my skin. The sanctity of private property takes second place to the sanctity of the human personality. It falls to the Negro to reassert this proper priority of values because our ancestors were transformed from human personalities into private property. It falls to us to demand new forms of social planning, to create full employment, and to put automation at the service of human needs, not at the service of profits for we are the worst victims of unemployment.

Negroes are in the forefront of today's movement for social and racial justice because we know we cannot expect the realization of our aspirations through the same old anti-democratic social institutions and philosophies that have all along frustrated our aspirations. And so we have taken our struggle into the streets as the labor movement took its struggle into the streets, as Jesus Christ led the multitude through the streets of Judaea. The plain and simple fact is that until we went into the streets the federal government was indifferent to our demands.

It was not until the streets and jails of Birmingham were filled that Congress began to think about civil rights legislation. It was not until thousands demonstrated in the South that lunch counters and other public accommodations were integrated. It was not until the Freedom Riders were brutalized in Alabama that the 1946 Supreme Court decision banning discrimination in interstate travel was enforced and it was not until construction sites were picketed in the North that Negro workers were hired. Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation.

They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy. The months and years ahead will bring new evidence of masses in motion for freedom. The March on Washington is not the climax of our struggle, but a new beginning not only for the Negro but for all Americans who thirst for freedom and a better life. Look for the enemies of Medicare, of higher minimum wages, of Social Security, of federal aid to education and there you will find the enemy of the Negro, the coalition of Dixiecrats and reactionary Republicans that seek to dominate the Congress.

We must develop strength in order that we may be able to back and support the civil rights program of President Kennedy. In the struggle against these forces, all of us should be prepared to take to the streets. The spirit and techniques that built the labor movement, founded churches, and now guide the civil rights revolution must be a massive crusade, must be launched against the unholy coalition of Dixiecrats and of the racists that seek to strangle Congress. We here today are only the first wave.

When we leave, it will be to carry on the civil rights revolution home with us into every nook and cranny of the land, and we shall return again and again to Washington in every growing numbers until total freedom is ours.

Brian: A Philip Randolph, his complete March on Washington speech from 60 years ago today as we commemorate that anniversary. With me now, University of Minnesota historian, William P Jones, author of the book, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights. Professor Jones, thanks for giving us some time on this anniversary. We know you're in demand today because of your book and your expertise. Welcome to WNYC.

Professor Jones: Thanks for having me on.

Brian: Listeners, this history segment is also an oral history segment. We're now inviting you to call in if you attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Why did you go? What do you remember most about being there? 212-433-WNYC and anything else you want to say about that experience or tie it to today if you like. Listeners, even if you didn't attend in person, but remember the March on Washington. Maybe you saw it on television. Maybe you just saw news reports of it on television. Maybe your parents talked to you about it and you were six years old.

What do you remember most about the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom August 28th, 1963, 60 years ago today? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Professor Jones, as calls are coming in, A Philip Randolph, who we heard there, is a focal point of your book, at least as much Dr. King, even though he's not nearly as well remembered by the broader public. Can you tell us why you focused on A Philip Randolph?

Professor Jones: As you mentioned in the introduction, it was his idea to have a March on Washington, and he organized the first March on Washington in 1941, called it off when he achieved some of the important goals of that March. When he called that off, he always said that it would be important to keep marching and to plan for a future March. The 1963 March was in many respects the fulfillment of that goal, and something that really the success of the March both built on the goals and the achievements of the 1941 March, but also entailed many of the same people and organizations that grew out of that March. The two marches really go together.

Brian: How much of a mentor was he to Dr. King and a force behind the 1963 March?

Professor Jones: Very much. He spoke at Morehouse College when Dr. King was a freshman there, and Dr. King, a few years after that, called A Philip Randolph, the dean of civil rights leaders. When Dr. King really became a well-known civil rights leader during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it was A Philip Randolph who put together a fundraising network in New York City and other northern cities, mostly of Black trade unionists, and sent funds to support the Montgomery Bus Boycott, also arranged for Bayard Rustin, who was perhaps the principal strategist of nonviolent civil disobedience, to go to Montgomery and to advise Dr. King. They had a very close mentorship relationship going back several decades by 1963.

Brian: Before we take some of the people who were calling in and proof all our lines are full when we asked for people who did something 60 years ago, wow, the full name of the event was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. What was the jobs or the labor aspect of that in addition to the fight for basic civil rights to end the Jim Crow era?

Professor Jones: In the speech that you played, A Philip Randolph mentions a number of aspects of that agenda, the raising the minimum wage, the Fair Employment Practices Act, which came out of the original 1941 March of law prohibiting employment discrimination that would become Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and a jobs creation program. He argued that it was essential that both Black workers and white workers have jobs. There isn't competition that he argued would always put Black workers as the last to be hired and the first to be fired.

He argued, and really central to the objectives of the March was the idea that economic justice was really essential to racial equality and the two could not be achieved without the other.

Brian: Let's hear some oral history. Audrey in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Audrey, thank you so much for calling in.

Audrey: Oh, I'm so happy you took my call. Yes, I went to the March on Washington. I remember what I wore, it was a peach dress, and I had on high heels. What was most important that I stayed at the DuPont Plaza Hotel along with Ralph Abernathy and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and I was there because I was a guest of one of Reverend Martin Luther King's lawyers.

I'll never forget when this March was over and everybody got back to the hotel, Ralph Abernathy and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King came to our room and Reverend Martin Luther King wanted to know what did I think about his speech.

Brian: Wow.

Audrey: That was so important that I always remember that 60 years later-

Brian: Do you remember--?

Audrey: -and we just left the March on Washington with Reverend Al Sharpton.

Brian: Oh, because there was a commemoration March yesterday indeed or this weekend.

Audrey: Would I call it a continuation March, continuing. Yes.

Brian: Good. Do you remember what you said to Dr. King about what you thought about his speech?

Audrey: I told him it was incredible. I don't remember the exact words, but I told him it was just incredible. I have a dream. You could remember that. Everybody remembers that Martin had a dream, and Mahalia Jackson was the one that said, "Martin, tell him about your dream." Then from whatever he was going to say, he went into what his dream was.

Brian: I just got to ask you one more thing before we go on to some other callers with their memories. You wore high heels to a March?

Audrey: Yes, indeed. I saw many women yesterday, Saturday, that was, in their high heels, but I was 26 years old. This time, I had on my sneakers. [laughs]

Brian: Audrey, thank you very much. What a wonderful call. Professor Jones, does it come up in your book at all, what everybody, or what some people wore to the March on Washington in 1963?

Professor Jones: The call went out for people to wear comfortable shoes, so hopefully, they were comfortable high-heeled shoes. [chuckles]

Brian: Sheila in the West Village was at the March on Washington. Sheila, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Sheila: Hello.

Brian: Hi, Sheila.

Sheila: Hi. Am I in the air now?

Brian: Yes, ma'am.

Sheila: Oh, okay. I was there. I was there with my husband, and we took a couple of days off from our three children. Our middle child's birthday is on today, August 28th, and she was one year old. When we got there, it was just wonderful. It was so amazing. The spirit, the feeling of the people was so wonderful. There was one sad thing, and that is that we were toward the back, way ahead was some tear gas that they had-- In other words, it was more of a tussle of fear of this March going on than it generally realized because when I smelled that tear gas from a distance, I was quite frightened.

It didn't seem to affect most people. The feeling was the same. Then toward the end, we started to leave, and then we heard that wonderful speech from Martin Luther King Jr about his dream and it just made me feel so happy just to hear that. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience.

Brian: Sheila, thank you very much. I didn't know about tear gas being deployed at the March. Is that something you know to be factual, Professor Jones?

Professor Jones: I haven't heard that. I know that there was a plan. There was anticipation. Authorities were certain that there was going to be violence, and there was extensive preparation for violence. All of the reporting that I have seen indicates that there were no clashes, and I haven't heard of the use of tear gas. The closest there was was that the American Nazi Party applied for a permit. They were denied a permit. Then some of their members went there and taunted people and tried to provoke violence, but they were unsuccessful as far as I know.

Brian: In a larger context, you've commented, I know, on how we think of the March on Washington as a great nonviolent event, which it was, but that it was seen by the federal government and others as a really threatening prospect in advance with more than 200,000 people expected to converge for civil rights. Can you expand on how it was anticipated by President Kennedy or anyone else? In fact, I thought I heard a little bit of booing in the A Philip Randolph speech when he mentioned Kennedy.

Professor Jones: [chuckles] Yes. The Kennedy administration from the beginning took the position that the March was misled. They felt that Kennedy had introduced a fairly moderate civil rights bill into Congress, and he felt that marching would probably lead to violence. Even if it didn't lead to violence, it would probably strengthen the opposition in Congress. He did really all he could to try to get A Philip Randolph and Dr. King and others to call off the march up until really the last minute when it became clear that they were not going to back down.

When it was clear that the march was going to take place, the preparations for violence were pretty remarkable. They emptied all of the city jails in anticipation that they would need the space to fill up with people who would be arrested. They staged troops across the Potomac, in Arlington ready to be helicoptered into the National Mall to make mass arrests. They closed all federal office buildings, all liquor stores in Washington DC were closed. Many of the downtown businesses closed for the day. There was an anticipation that was going to lead to violence.

I think in some respects, the fact that it didn't, and the fact that it was such a tremendous display of non-violence civil disobedience or nonviolent mass mobilization, it gives us a sense. Now, we look back on it and it's hard to believe that people were so afraid of this, but at the time, if you read the press, there was really widespread alarm and anticipation of violence.

Brian: I can't help but think of the contrast with January 6th and the contrast between A Philip Randolph's language of non-violence, and we have come together not as a threat, and Rudy Giuliani exhorting the crowd to trial by combat his phrase, and now he'll stand trial by jury. That's really another segment, but there's the contrast. In one case-

Professor Jones: That's a fascinating contrast.

Brian: -violence anticipated by the authorities, and it didn't happen. In the other case, violence not anticipated by the authorities, maybe because of their biases regarding who the crowd was going to be, and it did happen.

Professor Jones: Yes, that's true.

Brian: Sharon in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sharon.

Sharon: Hi. Good morning. Thank you. I love this show. I did not attend the March, but I was 11 years old. I watched it with my family on our black-and-white TV. My dad was from the segregated south from Alabama, and after King's speech, he worried that he would be killed. As kids, we raised money for the Poor People's Campaign that was going on. I remember counting nickels and dimes, and rolling them up and put them in this bag and take them down to the drop-off station.

That was the Poor People's Campaign was followed up after this march, and one of the things my family friends and I committed to memorizing Martin Luther King's speech, and that's what we did. We test each other back and forth.

Brian: Wow.

Sharon: A Philip Randolph has a bio by J Anderson. I've read that also, so thank you so much for doing this, but definitely, it needs to be commemorate, and I announced it in my church yesterday.

Brian: Sharon, thank you. Thank you for that plug in your church, and that's an amazing story about you and your peers memorizing the I Have a Dream speech after watching it on TV when you were 11. Rudy in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rudy.

Rudy: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for taking my call. I have a profound memory of juxtaposition of grad elation because I was at the march as a 22-year-old. I had ordered a bus at a mobile station near Willoughby Walk, near [unintelligible 00:23:29] Avenue because, at 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM, departure meant that that was going to be a problem for me.

I was living in Harlem, but a woman who had caught my eye and attention had offered me a chance to stay with her that night because the bus was leaving from a mobile station just a couple blocks from her house, so the joy and excitement of the day was matched by the opportunity to be with the object for a 22-year-old boy who was drinking too much, and parting probably too much as well.

I remember profoundly mostly it was a videotaped memory, and I'm a little confused about what I actually recall, but what does stand out here was rejection by the same busload of Blacks and whites going back to Brooklyn on I-95 north, being denied service at a Howard Johnson's on 95 north after a day of elation at one of the most profoundly significant moments in history, really slapped back into reality of a lot of work is yet to be done. I'm thinking, Sam Cooke A Change is Gonna Come.

I had the wonderful, wonderful opportunity to recognize between those two extremes for a 22-year-old, one jumps through all the others, is that notion of being denied service on 95 north in a Greyhound bus by a national brand, refusing service for Black folks who came with elation and celebration. Thanks for having this opportunity to talk about it.

Brian: Rudy, let me ask you one follow-up. Do you remember what language or were you witness to what language might have been used by the person at Howard Johnson's denying service to the bus?

Rudy: I only remember attitude, not language. I remember that. It was the kind of attitude that I see showing up increasingly in the last year or two, or the last three or four years, maybe from mega right people wanting us to know that while you folks might be making some demands, we've got something for you when you start showing up here.

Brian: Rudy, thank you so much for your call. We really appreciate it. Marilyn in West Orange was at the March on Washington 60 years ago. Hi, Marilyn. Thanks for calling in, you're on WNYC. Marilyn, turn your radio down because you're hearing us on delay. All right. We're going to get back to Marilyn in just a second. Marilyn, hang in there. We will take your call. Any thoughts on that last call, Professor Jones?

Professor Jones: Yes, that's really fascinating. I have heard there were a number of incidents where people returning from the march were attacked. There was several beatings in bus stations in Alabama and in Mississippi. There were reports of gunfire directed toward buses that were heading north on 95 back toward Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. The most dramatic scene that I found was in Philadelphia, a young Black couple had not gone to the march, but the day after the march planned to move into a home that they had purchased in suburban Philadelphia.

Their home was surrounded by a mob that did not allow them to come in, that threatened their life, and actually went back into the house after they left and tore the house to pieces. That was reported in several newspapers as, "This is the day after the March on Washington, and this is what we're still confronting," as one newspaper said in the City of Brotherly Love in Philadelphia.

Brian: Let's try Marilyn in West Orange again. Marilyn, you there? I think we have you now.

Marilyn: Yes, I am here. I was at the March on Washington with my young fiancé. He worked for Turn Toward Peace. I remember those speeches and I remember being very impressed with A Philip Randolph and we said-- I Have a Dream speech was very sweet and inspiring. I'd like to also remember that Bayard Rustin was very influential in organizing this march. He was a pacifist and was very effective in transmitting the nonviolent philosophy through the whole movement actually. It was a wonderful feeling of solidarity there, and it's something that, of course, I will never forget.

Brian: Thank you, Marilyn. Thank you so much. You mentioned Bayard Rustin briefly before Professor Jones. You want to talk any more about him?

Professor Jones: Yes. He was really the most important strategist of nonviolence, and the person, as I mentioned, he was sent to Montgomery to train Dr. King in non-violence. A Philip Randolph, when he started to plan the 1963 March, said Bayard Rustin needs to be the director of the march. There was opposition because Bayard Rustin was openly gay, and he had also as a young man belonged to the Young Communist League. There was a fear that him being the director of the march would call negative attention to the march.

Of course, there was already negative attention to the march. A Philip Randolph really dug in. He actually said, "I'll be the director of the march." Immediately appointed Bayard Rustin as his deputy director, and that put Bayard Rustin in the position of heading the organization of the march, which everyone knew was the most important. He was the most skilled and qualified person to do that.

Brian: One more piece of oral history, John in Yonkers, who says he was living in New Orleans at the time and was 16. Yes, John.

John: Hey. Hi, Brian. My friends and I were keen on watching this because the integration, and everything was roiling through New Orleans at the time. I went to segregated high shools there, but then when the march was happening, one of the main reasons I wanted to see it was we would get to see Joan Baez and we'd get to see Bob Dylan. I'd never seen Dylan and he was never on the radio back then. Certainly, not in New Orleans. When Dylan sang, he sang a song called Only a Pawn in Their Game, which is about the murder of Medgar Evers up in Jackson, Mississippi.

The song talks about, for me, it hit more of one of the reasons for all of this, all of the turmoil, and all the continued racism. It was about the poor white man's used in the hands of the [unintelligible 00:30:45] like a tool, he's taught in his school, that the laws are with him to protect his white skin, to keep up his hate, so he never thinks straight about this shape that he's in. He was Dylan seeing that. It was the first time I had ever seen him. I thought, "No, that's it." That's interesting to hear a pop star, a folk singer be that frank and that honest.

I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled to see it. All of that time, for young people, young white people, it was an education to hear what the folk singing movement was doing. We were aware of everything else, but it didn't hit home as easily as the music of those two particular artists.

Brian: Another amazing memory, John, thank you so much. Does Dylan come up in your book?

Professor Jones: Yes, he does. That song I think is really remarkable that he-- Medgar Evers was killed in mid-June of 1963, so Bob Dylan wrote that song just before the march and performed it there, and it's a very powerful song, and I think it resonated with a lot of the broader message of the march that this economic system of economic exploitation that was part of this system of racial inequality that was attacked at the march.

Brian: Here we are 60 years later, and the lead story in the news today, or a lead story in the news today is of that racist killing in Jacksonville, Florida, where some guy who was about to commit suicide I guess gave himself a last wish and killed three Black people on the basis of race. Wasn't it also on August 28th, back in '55 that Emmett Till was murdered?

Professor Jones: That's right. That August 28th was the anniversary of Emmett Till's murder. I think it's also important to remember--

Brian: Was this date August 28th in '63 picked at all in commemoration of the Emmett Till murder?

Professor Jones: It's interesting. I wasn't able to find any discussion of that in the organizing. I assume that that was part of it, but I didn't see them actually say that that was why they chose it. We should note that A Philip Randolph, Jacksonville was A Philip Randolph's hometown, and he was born there. I think again, that the long history of that of this problem, I think goes back to that.

Brian: University of Minnesota historian William P Jones, author of the book, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights. We so appreciate your time today. Thank you very much.

Professor Jones: Thank you for having me on.

 

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