March on Washington Celebrates Sixty Years

The March on Washington highlighted changes the country needed to make on race that had yet to come to fruition during the hundred years since slavery.  It marked the first united front against injustice in the country's history.

A crowd of 250 thousand whites and blacks assembled near the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, for jobs and freedom. They witnessed speeches by activist and Freedom Rider John Lewis, the organizer  Byron Rustin, who put the government on notice, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, who inspired everyone with his historic I Have A Dream Speech. Other brave leaders, such as Whitney Young, also took the podium.

A. Phillip Randolph, who had hoped for such a moment since the 1940s, ensured the march went off without a hitch while Mahalia Jackson graced the audience with her singing ability. Ossie Davis,  his wife Ruby Dee, and other celebrities were also on hand for the event. It propelled the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement to new heights as lifelong changes would come to pass. 

 President John F. Kennedy, who would be pressured to modify his stance on Civil Rights, and members of his cabinet watched from the sidelines as African Americans departed the gathering filled with hope and optimism for the future.

The timing could not have been better as the country was mired in Jim Crow in the South and deep-seated racism in the North.  A system of Sharecropping caused many blacks to live in abject poverty in the Southern States as scores of Northern blacks were confined to public housing with few job opportunities. Schools and other facilities south of the so-called Mason-Dixon Line and parts of the Midwest were still segregated despite Supreme Court rulings. 

The march and other crucial events accelerated the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. People of color were no longer mandated to separate seating areas in restaurants or other establishments, for instance, or could receive care at any hospital. It also improved housing for blacks and quickened the process of school integration. 

Voting took center stage as African Americans participated in the elections of 1964 and '68 in record numbers. Black elected officials jumped from as little as 400 before then to as many as 4,000. Blacks packed voter registration offices in places like Americus, Georgia, and other rural communities that were ground zero in the fight for freedom.

Although the March on Washington intended to make changes that the country desperately needed, it endured heartbreaking challenges. A month after the march, four little black girls lost their lives in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. It brought men and women of all races to their knees. Two years later, in 1965, black protestors attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selman, Alabama, on their way to the state capitol in Montgomery, were beaten mercilessly by State officials in an incident that became known as Bloody Sunday.

In the decades since that historic day in Washington,  D.C., African Americans have enjoyed a standard of living their ancestors never dreamed possible in a nation smoldering with hate for its fellow man. Although there may be uncertainty about the future, many believe the best is yet to come.