It is worth remembering the stated demands of the event
which led to arguably the greatest speech of the 20th century. The
March on Washington represented a coalition of several civil rights
organizations. Among the demands were the passage of meaningful civil rights
legislation; the elimination of racial segregation in public schools;
protection for demonstrators against police brutality; a major public-works
program to provide jobs; and the passage of a law prohibiting racial
discrimination in public and private hiring.
The second part of Professor Hilary Russell’s lecture
began with a film of Dr. King giving his famous speech from the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. A crowd of over 250,000 attended what was
the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation’s capital and despite worries
of violence and a large police presence, the march is remembered for its
civility and peacefulness.
Watching the speech again after many years, I was quite
over-whelmed by my own memories of that time in my life. There was a great deal
of coverage on television and the March on Washington was the major news event
of the summer. I was 18 years old and as I watched the speech live longed to be
there, too. Within 10 days or so, I would be leaving my New England home to
attend George Washington University – only a few blocks away from where Martin
Luther King was speaking.
I can remember watching the speech as it built to its
astounding and mesmerizing conclusion. As Professor Russell said, “It was a
sermon, a political treatise, a work of poetry, all rolled into one.” I
remembered well how the speech began slowly and then seemed to swell in
authority and excitement as the words “I have a dream” echoed and re-echoed in
to an all-inclusive crescendo to “Let freedom ring”.
Midway through the speech, the great gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, is
said to have cried out, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin!” and that’s when he
ad-libbed what followed. “This” said, Professor Russell, “gave ‘I have a dream’
its raw power and edge – King was living
the words that he spoke.
As I listened to the power of the oratory so many
half-forgotten memories of that time came flooding back. His words and the
peacefulness of the movement he led inspired me to believe that all things were
possible. I was on my way to the future filled with hope. Hope that came
crashing down around me two months after my arrival in Washington, D.C. with the
assassination of John F. Kennedy. I remembered the evening of that day running
to the White House – only a few blocks away – and seeing hundreds of black
people, sobbing, walking aimlessly, as if a great dream had been destroyed. I saw
the helicopter arrive with the new President – the man who it turned out was
able to pass laws to uphold civil rights.
The decade of the 60’s was troubled and often violent.
Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both murdered – within weeks of each
other. I witnessed riots in the streets not far from where I was living. Many more
began to believe that non-violence would never succeed.
We still have work to do, but the words and work of
Martin Luther King definitely started us on a better path to righteousness. As he said at the end of his speech,
“When we let freedom ring,
when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and
every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children,
black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, 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!”

