Table of Diversity Weekly: March on Washington

August 28, 2023 marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. You may know of this moment because of Dr. King's infamous 'I Have a Dream' speech. To commemorate the occasion, people from all over the country gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to continue bringing attention to and fighting for equality.

Rev. Al Sharpton leads the National Action Network and was one of two groups that organized this year's march. He said, 'Sixty years ago, Martin Luther King talked about a dream. Sixty years later, we're the dreamers.'

This year's march was different for a number of reasons, but most excitedly, Demetria's Dad, Stanley, was in attendance! He graciously shared photos and his thoughts on the day. See if you can spot him in the main image for this week's edition!

Check out Stanley's profound thoughts and experience while participating in the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.

"The March on Washington was a historical event. One thing that came to mind was how easy it was for most of us to get to Washington in 2023, versus the struggles to get there in 1963. In 1963, Black people were not allowed to stay in most hotels, could not eat at most restaurants, and could not travel safely at night. We are very fortunate to be able to travel in much better conditions and circumstances than in 1963.

There were people in attendance that had actually participated in the 1963 March on Washington. Some people think that we have not made any progress since 1963 and that is an unfair characterization. We are not where we need to be, but we have made progress.

There was a common theme with each speaker- solidarity. In addition to African Americans being in attendance, there were people from the Jewish community supporting the march, as it was in 1963. There were people from the LGBTQ community. There was support from the AAPI community and the Indigenous community. It was uplifting to see people from different backgrounds come together for a common purpose.

While listening to the speakers, a person next to me asked if I felt that there were too many speakers and too much of a focus on the LGBTQ community. My response was, 'No, we need to hear the struggles of each of these communities while also joining forces to create a better world for everyone.'

I walked away from the day with a better understanding of how much stronger we could be if we all stand together and support each other. We don't just have a problem with racism. We don't just have a problem with homophobia. We don't just have a problem with antisemitism. We have a much bigger problem that negatively impacts everyone. We must be and lead the change we want to see. Going forward, we must show solidarity with those who are fighting for equality, present a united effort, and support one another's experience. That's the only way we can thrive."

Stanley is a recently retired plant manager who now spends his time exploring national parks, running and biking, and being the best Granddad ever! (Demetria might have added that last part!)

Special thanks to Stanley for sharing his thoughts on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington!

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An oral history of the March on Washington, 60 years after MLK's dream. -Washington Post

"Sixty years ago, they converged on the National Mall from across the country, to demand their nation fulfill the promise of the American Dream for all.

Some arrived with intent, others by happenstance. They were college students and college dropouts, activists who organized in city offices and in sharecropping shacks, workers on Capitol Hill and at the post office.

An estimated 250,000 Americans in all arrived by bus, by train and on foot to participate in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Together, they forged a cornerstone moment in American history and in the struggle for African American equality that enslavement and Jim Crow had long denied.

The March on Washington's 60th anniversary arrives Monday, amid a rise in white nationalism, after George Floyd's murder reignited protests and conversations about racism and inequality, and as the United States bitterly debates the teaching of the nation's past.

'The only way you break the cycle,' said marcher Patricia Tyson, then 15 and now 75, 'is to understand your history and talk about it.'

The Washington Post spent this summer interviewing participants in the March on Washington, including young civil rights soldiers, curious bystanders and behind-the-scene leaders, as well as voices from ensuing generations. Together, their quotes below capture the story of Aug. 28, 1963, beyond Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech, and what that day means now.

The country then was less than 50 years removed from national women's suffrage, less than a generation removed from the desegregation of he military and the national pastime, nine years removed from the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The march risked the civil rights movement's viability at a crucial moment, when African Americans faed violent and deadly backlash from police and white supremacists for seeking voting protections and fair treatment in their own country.

'I think that people don't really understand that the March on Washington wasn't just a celebration. It really was a protest march,' said Aaron Bryant, a curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.'

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What was the March on Washington. -BBC History Magazine

"The 1963 March on Washington made history as one of the largest protest marches ever staged, and the setting for Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech. Rhiannon Davies shares an explainer on the events of the day...

When was the March on Washington?

On 28 August 1963, a multi-racial crowd of more than 250,000 protesters flocked to the United States of America's capital, Washington DC, to take part in one of the biggest protest marches ever staged. They were campaigning in the name of jobs and freedom, trying to pressure the president at the time, John F. Kennedy, to pass the civil rights legislation that he had long been promising. On the day, protesters gathered at the Washington Monument, before marching about a mile down the National Mall to gather in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. Despite the authorities' fears that violence might break out, the atmosphere of the day was peaceful. In fact, it has even been described by some as 'like a picnic'.

What happened at the March on Washington?

The day's programme was packed with a full roster of entertainers and inspiring activists. Marchers sung along to musicians like Bob Dylan, prayed with pastors, and at the end of the night listened in awe to the final speaker: Martin Luther King Jr. King was an icon by this time, having first risen to fame during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, sparked by Rosa Parks' decision not to give us her bus seat. He was one of the boycott's leaders, and his inspiring speeches had captivated the press and roused the nation. But it was during the March on Washington that he delivered his most iconic speech: the 'I have a dream' speech."

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Civil rights leaders seek energy of original movement at March on Washington's 60th anniversary. -PBS

"Sixty years ago, Andrew Young and his staff had just emerged from an exhausting campaign against racial segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.

But they didn't feel no ways tired, as the Black spiritual says. The foot soldiers were on a 'freedom high,' Young recalls.

'They wanted to keep on marching, they wanted to march from Birmingham to Washington,' he said.

And march they did, in the nation's capital. Just four months later, they massed for what is still considered one of the greatest and most consequential racial justice demonstrations in U.S. history.

The nonviolent protest, which attracted as many as 250,000 to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, helped till the ground for passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the next few years.

But in the decades that followed, the rights gains feeding the freedom high felt by Young and others came under increasing threat. A close adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Young went on the become a congressman, a U.N. ambassador and Atlanta's mayor. He sees clear progress from the time when Black Americans largely had no guarantee of equal rights under the law. But he hasn't ignored the setbacks.

'We take two steps forward, and they make us take one step back,' Young told The Associated Press in an interview at the offices of his Atlanta-based foundation.

'It's a slow process that depends on the politics of the nation.'

At 91 years old, an undeterred Young will gather again with Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of allies of Saturday, to mark 60 years since the first March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, an event most widely remembered for King's 'I Have A Dream' speech.

But organizers of this year's commemoration don't see this as an occasion for kumbaya- not in the face of eroded voting rights nationwide, after the recent striking down of affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights by the Supreme Court, and amid growing threats of political violence and hatred against people of color, Jews and the LGBTQ community.

These issues today appear eerily similar to the issues in 1963. The undercurrent of it all is that Black people are still the economically poorest in American society.

Organizers intend to remind the nation that the original march wasn't just about dreaming of a country that lived up to its promises of equality and liberty to pursue happiness. They wanted legislative action then, and they want the same now.

The survival of American democracy depends on it, the organizers say."

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Reconsidering Rustin: His Trailblazing Legacy 60 Years After the March on Washington. -The Reckoning

"Considered a brilliant organizer with an aptitude for detail, he's the exacting architect of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, an unprecedented demand for civil rights which drew a quarter of a million people to the National Mall- and catapulted Martin Luther king Jr. into national prominence.

Those who knew him describe a tall, athletic, charismatic man with a restless intellect and a passion for social justice. He worked on a chain gang for protesting segregation in the 1940s, did jail time for refusing to fight in World War II and introduced King to Gandhi's teachings of nonviolent resistance during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955.

Yet despite his undeniable imprint on the civil rights struggle, hailed in a front-page obituary in The New York Times in 1987, Bayard Rustin's life and work is often considered an historic footnote- a giant toiling in the shadow of a titan.

For generations, discussions of Rustin began and ended with his role in organizing the March On Washington in 1963, which placed the civil rights struggle at the top of the national agenda. Experts say that's because Rustin's complex legacy is largely diminished by his private life as an out gay man, in an era that was hostile to his sexuality as well as his race.

Now, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, scholars, biographers and gay-rights activists are leading a public reconsideration of Rustin's place in history. They argue that Rustin was a singular figure in American history, a man ahead of his time who deserves elevation into the civil rights pantheon."

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Women at the first March on Washington: a secretary, a future bishop and a marshal. -Religion News Service

"In front of the crowds and the cameras, the speeches of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other men loomed large 60 years ago at the March on Washington.

But the women, including those of faith, who played roles in its organization, its music and its news coverage were mostly left off the official program.

'They did not accept their exclusion quietly,' stated the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in a description posted on its website ahead of the anniversary. 'Individuals like Anna Arnold Hedgeman of the National Council of Churches strategized with others and convinced (organizer Roy) Wilkins to include a female speaker. Only one woman spoke: Daisy Bates, NAACP chapter president and an advisor to the Little Rock Nine.'

The Rev. Barbara Williams-Skinner, who came to Washington as the first female executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus a decade after the march, recalls prominent Black women leaders of that era sharing with her their 'anger and angst' of having to sit silently that day.

The co-convener of the National African American Clergy Network said that, although they may not have had much of a voice that day, she is certain of the influence of women, famous and unfamiliar, on the march's success from behind the scenes.

'If anything got organized, the women were putting in extra time,' she said, 'even though they faced the unfairness of not being able to speak.'

As the nation marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, Religion News Service talked to three women- a secretary in King's office, a schoolgirl who became a bishop and a high school grad who helped escort Malcolm X, about their memories and roles in that historic moment."

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Speaking Out with a Shared Voice Against Hate. -Time

"On August 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech to more than 250,000 supporters gathered on the National Mall.

That day, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a survivor of Nazi Germany, spoke just before Dr. King, and he reminded the audience that 'the most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.'

In the early 20th Century, despite their vastly different American experiences, Jewish and Black communities both faced identity-based violence, discrimination, ostracization and stereotypes. Racism and antisemitism were rampant.

In April 1958, 54 sticks of dynamite were placed outside of Temple Beth-El in Birmingham, Alabama in a failed bombing attempt, just a few years before the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in that same city took the lives of four young girls. In 1964, Jewish and African American volunteers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

While there's been tremendous progress since those days, as civil rights and voting rights measures have since been signed into law and non-discrimination protections have been expanded, recent events have threatened to turn back the clock on that progress.

We have witnessed racism and antisemitism unleashed at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, white supremacist violence targeting the African American community in a racially motivated attack in Buffalo, and hate-motivated shootings at churches and synagogues, from the murder of nine worshippers inside the Mother Emanual AME Church in Charleston to the slaughter of 11 Jews inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. There's also the scourge of police violence and brutality against Black people- from George Floyd to Breonna Taylor to Daunte Wright.

The FBI's annual hate crime data report consistently finds that anti-Black hate crimes make up the majority of race-based hate crime incidents- and the largest single portion of hate crimes overall- and anti-Jewish hate crimes make up well over half of all religion-based hate crimes despite the fact that American Jews represent a meager two percent of the entire U.S. population."

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Stuff You Should Know: How the March on Washington Worked

"1963 was a huge year of conflict and progress for the American Civil Rights Movement and the March On Washington was the high water mark of that eventful year. Join Josh and Chuck as they get into the story behind the story we learning in school."

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Throughline: Bayard Rustin: The Man Behind the March on Washington

"Bayard. Rustin, the man behind the March on Washington, was one of the most consequential architects of the civil rights movement you may never have heard of. Rustin imagined how nonviolent civil resistance could be used to dismantle segregation in the United States. He organized around the idea for years and eventually introduced it to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But his identity as a gay man made him a target, obscured his rightful status and made him feel forced to choose, again and again, which aspect of his identity was most important."

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The March on Washington 60 Years Later

FOX 5's Marissa Mitchell sits down with Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King ahead of the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.

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Weekly Activities

Activity 1: The March on Washington is viewed today as a vital moment in American history and pivotal in the movement for civil rights. However, it was not always popular. Bayard Rustin worked hard to gain buy-in from many stakeholders, including Dr. King. It takes courage to be bold and step outside the box.

What ideas is your team sitting on because it is bold, different, and perhaps, unorthodox? Who do you need to get onboard to carry out, what might be the very thing your team, department, or organization needs to breakthrough and achieve next-level results?

Activity 2: Dr. King's 'I Have Dream' speech is his most memorable speech. With your team, listen to or read Dr. King's speech and discuss what it means to you today. Here are some questions you might ask yourself and your team:

1. What parts of Dr. King's speech resonate with you the most and why?

2. Has Dr. King's 'Dream' come to fruition? Why or why not?

3. What are you inspired to do after revisiting Dr. King's speech?

Activity 3: The March on Washington has had a significant impact on people and laws around the world. 60 years later, we are still talking about it's impact and the change it facilitated in the law, business, and how people viewed civil rights. Think about your impact as a leader. Are you creating a legacy, within your organization or community, that will have a ripple effect for decades to come? If you are only thinking about your leadership in the short term, what would it look like to think bigger?

For this week's activity, think about the impact you want to have in your leadership and be bold. Write it down in a notebook, on your refrigerator, on your bathroom mirror- somewhere you will see it regularly and take incremental steps towards making it happen. For an extra motivator, share your impact statement with someone else!

Book Recommendation

The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights by William P. Jones

"It was the final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In a resounding cadence, Martin Luther King Jr. lifted the crowd when he told of his dream that all Americans would join together to realize the founding ideal of equality. The power of the speech created an enduring symbol of the march and the larger civil rights movement. King's speech still inspires us fifty years later, but its very power has also narrowed our understanding of the march. In this insightful history, William P. Jones restores the march to its full significance.

The opening speech of the day was delivered by the leader of the march, the great trade unionist A. Philip Randolph, who first called for a march on Washington in 1941 to press for equal opportunity in employment and the armed forces. To the crowd that stretched more than a mile before him, Randolph called for an end to segregation and a living wage for every American. Equal access to accommodations and services would mean little to people, white and black, who could not afford them. Randolph's egalitarian vision of economic and social citizenship is the strong thread running through the full history of the March on Washington Movement. It was a movement of sustained grassroots organizing, linked locally to women's groups, unions, and churches across the country. Jones's fresh, compelling history delivers a new understanding of this emblematic event and the broader civil rights movement it propelled."

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People You Should Know!

A. Philip Randolph

"A. Philip Randolph, whom Martin Luther King, Jr., called 'truly the Dean of Negro leaders,' played a crucial role in gaining recognition of African Americans in labor organizations. A socialist and a pacifist, Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful black trade union, and the Negro American Labor Council (NALC).

The youngest son of a poor preacher deeply committed to racial politics, Randolph was born in Crescent City, Florida, on 15 April 1889. He graduated from Jacksonville's Cookman Institute in 1911, relocating to New York City soon afterward. In 1917 Randolph and Chandler Owen founded the Messenger, an African American socialist journal critical of American involvement in World War I.

After the 1925 founding of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Randolph succeeded in gaining recognition of the union from the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1937. When the union signed its first contract with the company, membership rose to nearly 15,000. In 1941 Randolph threatened a march on Washington, D.C., if the federal government did not address racial discrimination in the defense industry. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination in the defense industry and established the Fair Employment Practices commission. Randolph also helped to form the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience against Military Segregation, which influenced President Harry S. Truman's decision to desegregate the armed services in 1948.

After the American Federation of Labor merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations to form the AFL-CIO in 1955, Randolph was appointed to the new organization's executive council, when he became one of its fist two black vice presidents. As a labor official, Randolph won significant union support for the civil rights movement and allied with King and other organizations on initiatives like the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.

In 1959 Randolph founded NALC in an effort to effectively present the demands of black workers to the labor movement. Randolph and NALC helped initiate the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which King delivered his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech."